Being the flattest and driest inhabited continent,[11] with the oldest and least fertile soils,[12][13] Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi).[14] A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east.[15] A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, which boosted the population of the country.[16] Nevertheless, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world.[17] Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications, banking and manufacturing.[18][19][20]Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites.[21]

Name

The name Australia (pronounced [əˈstɹæɪljə, -liə] in Australian English[28]) is derived from the LatinTerra Australis ("southern land"), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.[29] When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was naturally applied to the new territories.[N 4]

Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts.[N 5] The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth".[35] The first time that Australia appears to have been officially used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst.[36] In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[37] In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name.[38] The first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office.[39]

Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under" (usually shortened to just "Down Under"). Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country".[40]

History

Pre-colonial history

Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago,[41][42] with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. These first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians.[43] At the time of European settlement in the late 18th century, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies.[42] Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas.[44] The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by Makassan fishermen from South Peninsula, Sulawesi.[45]

European arrival

Portrait of Captain James Cook, the first European to map the eastern coastline of Australia in 1770

The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent (in 1606), are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon.[46] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[47] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement.[47]William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699 on a return trip.[48] In 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain.[49]

With the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the "First Fleet", under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[50] a date which became Australia's national day, Australia Day, although the British Crown Colony of New South Wales was not formally promulgated until 7 February 1788. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration and settlement of other regions.[citation needed]

A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825.[51] The United Kingdom formally claimed the western part of Western Australia (the Swan River Colony) in 1828.[52] Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859.[53] The Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia.[54] South Australia was founded as a "free province"—it was never a penal colony.[55] Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free", but later accepted transported convicts.[56][57] A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.[58]

The indigenous population, estimated to have been between 750,000 and 1,000,000 in 1788,[59] declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease.[60] Thousands more died as a result of frontier conflict with settlers.[61] A government policy of "assimilation" beginning with the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities—often referred to as the Stolen Generations—a practice which may also have contributed to the decline in the indigenous population.[62] As a result of the 1967 referendum, the Federal government's power to enact special laws with respect to a particular race was extended to enable the making of laws with respect to Aborigines.[63] Traditional ownership of land ("native title") was not recognised in law until 1992, when the High Court of Australia held in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that the legal doctrine that Australia had been terra nullius ("land belonging to no one") did not apply to Australia at the time of British settlement.[64]

Colonial expansion

A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s[16] and the Eureka Rebellion against mining licence fees in 1854 was an early expression of civil disobedience.[65] Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government, managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire.[66] The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs,[67] defence,[68] and international shipping.

Britain's Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and the UK. Australia adopted it in 1942,[81] but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed by the Australian Parliament during World War II.[82][83] The shock of the United Kingdom's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the threat of Japanese invasion caused Australia to turn to the United States as a new ally and protector.[84] Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the US, under the ANZUS treaty.[85] After World War II Australia encouraged immigration from mainland Europe. Since the 1970s and following the abolition of the White Australia policy, immigration from Asia and elsewhere was also promoted.[86] As a result, Australia's demography, culture, and self-image were transformed.[87] The passing of the Australia Act 1986 ended all possibility for any vestigial role of the British government in the government in Australia and removed the already seldom-used option of judicial appeals to the Privy Council in London.[88] In a 1999 referendum, 55% of voters and a majority in every state rejected a proposal to become a republic with a president appointed by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of the Australian Parliament. Since the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972,[89] there has been an increasing focus in foreign policy on ties with other Pacific Rim nations, while maintaining close ties with Australia's traditional allies and trading partners.[90]

Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and dry desert in the centre.[101] The desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land.[102] Australia is the driest inhabited continent; its annual rainfall averaged over continental area is less than 500 mm.[103] The population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, is among the lowest in the world,[17] although a large proportion of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline.[104]

Geology

Lying on the Indo-Australian Plate, Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest landmass on Earth with a relatively stable geological history.[121] The landmass includes virtually all known rock types and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the Earth's history.[122] The Pilbara Craton is one of only two pristine Archaean 3.6-2.7 Ga (billion years ago) crusts identified on the Earth.[123]

Australia is situated in the middle of the tectonic plate, and therefore currently has no active volcanism, the only continent with this distinction.[127]
Australia is currently moving toward Eurasia at the rate of 6-7 centimetres a year.[128]

According to the Bureau of Meteorology's 2011 Australian Climate Statement, Australia had lower than average temperatures in 2011 as a consequence of a La Niña weather pattern; however, "the country's 10-year average continues to demonstrate the rising trend in temperatures, with 2002–2011 likely to rank in the top two warmest 10-year periods on record for Australia, at 0.52 °C (0.94 °F) above the long-term average".[132] Furthermore, 2014 was Australia's third warmest year since national temperature observations commenced in 1910.[133][134]

Water restrictions are frequently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages due to urban population increases and localised drought.[135][136] Throughout much of the continent, major flooding regularly follows extended periods of drought, flushing out inland river systems, overflowing dams and inundating large inland flood plains, as occurred throughout Eastern Australia in 2010, 2011 and 2012 after the 2000s Australian drought.

Biodiversity

Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, it includes a diverse range of habitats from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests. Fungi typify that diversity; an estimated 250,000 species—of which only 5% have been described—occur in Australia.[140] Because of the continent's great age, extremely variable weather patterns, and long-term geographic isolation, much of Australia's biota is unique. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds, and 89% of in-shore, temperate-zone fish are endemic.[141] Australia has the greatest number of reptiles of any country, with 755 species.[142] Besides Antarctica, Australia is the only continent that developed without feline species. Feral cats may have been introduced in the 17th century by Dutch shipwrecks, and later in the 18th century by European settlers. They are now considered a major factor in the decline and extinction of many vulnerable and endangered native species.[143]

In the Senate (the upper house), there are 76 senators: twelve each from the states and two each from the mainland territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory).[163] The House of Representatives (the lower house) has 150 members elected from single-member electoral divisions, commonly known as "electorates" or "seats", allocated to states on the basis of population,[164] with each original state guaranteed a minimum of five seats.[165] Elections for both chambers are normally held every three years simultaneously; senators have overlapping six-year terms except for those from the territories, whose terms are not fixed but are tied to the electoral cycle for the lower house; thus only 40 of the 76 places in the Senate are put to each election unless the cycle is interrupted by a double dissolution.[163]

Australia's electoral system uses preferential voting for all lower house elections with the exception of Tasmania and the ACT which, along with the Senate and most state upper houses, combine it with proportional representation in a system known as the single transferable vote. Voting is compulsory for all enrolled citizens 18 years and over in every jurisdiction,[166] as is enrolment (with the exception of South Australia).[167] The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister. In cases where no party has majority support, the Governor-General has the constitutional power to appoint the Prime Minister and, if necessary, dismiss one that has lost the confidence of Parliament.[168]

There are two major political groups that usually form government, federally and in the states: the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition which is a formal grouping of the Liberal Party and its minor partner, the National Party.[169][170] Within Australian political culture, the Coalition is considered centre-right and the Labor Party is considered centre-left.[171] Independent members and several minor parties have achieved representation in Australian parliaments, mostly in upper houses.

Under the constitution, the States essentially have plenary legislative power to legislate on any subject, whereas the Commonwealth (federal) Parliament may legislate only within the subject areas enumerated under section 51. For example, State parliaments have the power to legislate with respect to education, criminal law and state police, health, transport, and local government, but the Commonwealth Parliament does not have any specific power to legislate in these areas.[175] However, Commonwealth laws prevail over State laws to the extent of the inconsistency.[176] In addition, the Commonwealth has the power to levy income tax which, coupled with the power to make grants to States, has given it the financial means to incentivize States to pursue specific legislative agendas within areas over which the Commonwealth does not have legislative power.

A wealthy country, Australia has a market economy, a relatively high GDP per capita, and a relatively low rate of poverty. In terms of average wealth, Australia ranked second in the world after Switzerland in 2013, although the nation's poverty rate increased from 10.2% to 11.8%, from 2000/01 to 2013.[200][201] It was identified by the Credit Suisse Research Institute as the nation with the highest median wealth in the world and the second-highest average wealth per adult in 2013.[200]

An emphasis on exporting commodities rather than manufactured goods has underpinned a significant increase in Australia's terms of trade since the start of the 21st century, due to rising commodity prices. Australia has a balance of payments that is more than 7% of GDP negative, and has had persistently large current account deficits for more than 50 years.[212] Australia has grown at an average annual rate of 3.6% for over 15 years, in comparison to the OECD annual average of 2.5%.[212]

Australia was the only advanced economy not to experience a recession due to the global financial downturn in 2008–2009.[213] However, the economies of six of Australia's major trading partners have been in recession, which in turn has affected Australia, significantly hampering its economic growth in recent years.[214][215] From 2012 to early 2013, Australia's national economy grew, but some non-mining states and Australia's non-mining economy experienced a recession.[216][217][218]

In May 2012, there were 11,537,900 people employed (either full- or part-time), with an unemployment rate of 5.1%.[223] Youth unemployment (15–24) stood at 11.2%.[223] Data released in mid-November 2013 showed that the number of welfare recipients had grown by 55%. In 2007 228,621 Newstart unemployment allowance recipients were registered, a total that increased to 646,414 in March 2013.[224] According to the Graduate Careers Survey, full-time employment for newly qualified professionals from various occupations has declined since 2011 but it increases for graduates three years after graduation.[225][226]

Since 2008, inflation has typically been 2–3% and the base interest rate 5–6%. The service sector of the economy, including tourism, education, and financial services, accounts for about 70% of GDP.[227]Rich in natural resources, Australia is a major exporter of agricultural products, particularly wheat and wool, minerals such as iron-ore and gold, and energy in the forms of liquified natural gas and coal. Although agriculture and natural resources account for only 3% and 5% of GDP respectively, they contribute substantially to export performance. Australia's largest export markets are Japan, China, the US, South Korea, and New Zealand.[228] Australia is the world's fourth largest exporter of wine, and the wine industry contributes A$5.5 billion per year to the nation's economy.[229]

Australia's population has quadrupled since the end of World War I,[232] much of this increase from immigration. Following World War II and through to 2000, almost 5.9 million new immigrants arrived and settled in the country.[233] Most immigrants are skilled,[234] but the immigration quota includes categories for family members and refugees.[234] By 2050, Australia's population is currently projected to reach around 42 million.[235]

In 2016, more than a quarter (26%) of Australia's population were born overseas; the five largest immigrant groups were those born in England (3.9%), New Zealand (2.2%), Mainland China (2.2%), India (1.9%), and the Philippines (1%).[236] Following the abolition of the White Australia policy in 1973, numerous government initiatives have been established to encourage and promote racial harmony based on a policy of multiculturalism.[237] In 2015–16, there were 189,770 permanent immigrants admitted to Australia, mainly from Asia.[238]

The Indigenous population—Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders—was counted at 649,171 (2.8% of the total population) in 2016.[239] The increase is partly due to many people with Indigenous heritage previously having been overlooked by the census due to undercount and cases where their Indigenous status had not been recorded on the form. Indigenous Australians experience higher than average rates of imprisonment and unemployment, lower levels of education, and life expectancies for males and females that are, respectively, 11 and 17 years lower than those of non-indigenous Australians.[228][240][241] Some remote Indigenous communities have been described as having "failed state"-like conditions.[242]

In common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age. In 2004, the average age of the civilian population was 38.8 years.[243] A large number of Australians (759,849 for the period 2002–03;[244] 1 million or 5% of the total population in 2005[245]) live outside their home country.

Language

Although Australia has no official language, English has always been entrenched as the de facto national language.[2]Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon,[248] and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling.[249]General Australian serves as the standard dialect.

According to the 2016 census, English is the only language spoken in the home for close to 72.7% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin (2.5%), Arabic (1.4%), Cantonese (1.2%), Vietnamese (1.2%) and Italian (1.2%).[250] A considerable proportion of first- and second-generation migrants are bilingual.

Over 250 Indigenous Australian languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact,[251] of which fewer than twenty are still in daily use by all age groups.[252][253] About 110 others are spoken exclusively by older people.[253] At the time of the 2006 census, 52,000 Indigenous Australians, representing 12% of the Indigenous population, reported that they spoke an Indigenous language at home.[254] Australia has a sign language known as Auslan, which is the main language of about 5,500 deaf people.[255]

Australia has no state religion; Section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the federal government from making any law to establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion.[256] In the 2016 census, 52.1% of Australians were counted as Christian, including 22.6% as Roman Catholic and 13.3% as Anglican; 30.1% of the population reported having "no religion"; 7.3% identify with non-Christian religions, the largest of these being Islam (2.6%), followed by Buddhism (2.5%), Hinduism (1.9%) and Judaism (0.4%). The remaining 9.6% of the population did not provide an adequate answer. Those who reported having no religion increased conspicuously from 19% in 2006 to 30% in 2016. The largest change was between 2011 (22%) and 2016 (30.1%), when a further 2.2 million people reported having no religion.[257]

Before European settlement, the animist beliefs of Australia's indigenous people had been practised for many thousands of years. Mainland Aboriginal Australians' spirituality is known as the Dreamtime and it places a heavy emphasis on belonging to the land. The collection of stories that it contains shaped Aboriginal law and customs. Aboriginal art, story and dance continue to draw on these spiritual traditions. The spirituality and customs of Torres Strait Islanders, who inhabit the islands between Australia and New Guinea, reflected their Melanesian origins and dependence on the sea. The 1996 Australian census counted more than 7000 respondents as followers of a traditional Aboriginal religion.[258]

Since the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships in 1788, Christianity has grown to be the major religion practised in Australia. Christian churches have played an integral role in the development of education, health and welfare services in Australia. For much of Australian history, the Church of England (now known as the Anglican Church of Australia) was the largest religious denomination. However, multicultural immigration has contributed to a decline in its relative position, and the Roman Catholic Church has benefitted from recent immigration to become the largest group. Similarly, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism have all grown in Australia over the past half-century.[259]

Australia has one of the lowest levels of religious adherence in the world.[260] In 2001, only 8.8% of Australians attended church on a weekly basis.[261]

Health

Australia has the third and seventh highest life expectancy of males and females respectively in the world.[262] Life expectancy in Australia in 2010 was 79.5 years for males and 84.0 years for females.[263] Australia has the highest rates of skin cancer in the world,[264] while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%.[265][266] Australia ranks 35th in the world[267] and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults[268] and nearly two thirds (63%) of its adult population is either overweight or obese.[269]

Total expenditure on health (including private sector spending) is around 9.8% of GDP.[270] Australia introduced universal health care in 1975.[271] Known as Medicare, it is now nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, currently set at 2%.[272] The states manage hospitals and attached outpatient services, while the Commonwealth funds the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (subsidising the costs of medicines) and general practice.[271]

Education

School attendance, or registration for home schooling,[274] is compulsory throughout Australia. Education is the responsibility of the individual states and territories[275] so the rules vary between states, but in general children are required to attend school from the age of about 5 until about 16.[276][277] In some states (e.g., Western Australia,[278] the Northern Territory[279] and New South Wales[280][281]), children aged 16–17 are required to either attend school or participate in vocational training, such as an apprenticeship.

Australia has 37 government-funded universities and two private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level.[284] The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university.[285] There is a state-based system of vocational training, known as TAFE, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople.[286] About 58% of Australians aged from 25 to 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications,[228] and the tertiary graduation rate of 49% is the highest among OECD countries. The ratio of international to local students in tertiary education in Australia is the highest in the OECD countries.[287] In addition, 30.9 percent of Australia's population has attained a higher education qualification, which is among the highest percentages in the world.[288][289][290]

Culture

Since 1788, the primary influence behind Australian culture has been Anglo-CelticWestern culture, with some Indigenous influences.[292][293] The divergence and evolution that has occurred in the ensuing centuries has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture.[294][295] Since the mid-20th century, American popular culture has strongly influenced Australia, particularly through television and cinema.[296] Other cultural influences come from neighbouring Asian countries, and through large-scale immigration from non-English-speaking nations.[296][297]

About 24% of Australians over the age of 15 regularly participate in organised sporting activities.[228]

Australia is unique in that it has professional leagues for four football codes. Australian rules football, the world's oldest major football code and Australia's most popular sport in terms of revenue and spectatorship, originated in Melbourne in the late 1850s, and predominates in all states except New South Wales and Queensland, where rugby league holds sway, followed by rugby union. Soccer, while ranked fourth in popularity and resources, has the highest overall participation rates.[337]

Australia is a powerhouse in water-based sports, such as swimming and surfing.[339] The surf lifesaving movement originated in Australia, and the volunteer lifesaver is one of the country's icons.[340] Nationally, other popular sports include horse racing, basketball, and motor racing. The annual Melbourne Cup horse race and the Sydney to Hobart yacht race attract intense interest.[341] In 2016, the Australian Sports Commission revealed that swimming, cycling and soccer are the three most popular participation sports.[342][343]

^The earliest recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625 in "A note of Australia del Espíritu Santo, written by Sir Richard Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, a corruption of the original Spanish name "Austrialia del Espíritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit)[30][31][32] for an island in Vanuatu.[33] The Dutch adjectival form australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south.[34]

^ ab"Population clock". Australian Bureau of Statistics website. Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 3 April 2018. The population estimate shown is automatically calculated daily at 00:00 UTC and is based on data obtained from the population clock on the date shown in the citation.

^"Constitution of Australia". ComLaw. 9 July 1900. Retrieved 5 August 2011. 3. It shall be lawful for the Queen, with the advice of the Privy Council, to declare by proclamation that, on and after a day therein appointed, not being later than one year after the passing of this Act, the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, and also, if Her Majesty is satisfied that the people of Western Australia have agreed thereto, of Western Australia, shall be united in a Federal Commonwealth under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia.

^Grant, Cameron (August 2007). "Damaged Dirt"(PDF). The Advertiser. Archived from the original(PDF) on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2010. Australia has the oldest, most highly weathered soils on the planet.

^United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, (2015). 'International Migration' in International migrant stock 2015. Accessed from International migrant stock 2015: maps on 24 May 2017.

^Purchas, vol. iv, pp. 1422–32, 1625. This appears to be variation of the original Spanish "Austrialia" [sic].[1] A copy at the Library of Congress can be read online "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 14 July 2015..

^"European discovery and the colonisation of Australia". Australian Government: Culture Portal. Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Commonwealth of Australia. 11 January 2008. Retrieved 7 May 2010. [The British] moved north to Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, landing at Camp Cove, known as 'cadi' to the Cadigal people. Governor Phillip carried instructions to establish the first British Colony in Australia. The First Fleet was under prepared for the task, and the soil around Sydney Cove was poor.

^"Continents: What is a Continent?". National Geographic Society. Retrieved 22 August 2009. "Most people recognize seven continents—Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia, from largest to smallest—although sometimes Europe and Asia are considered a single continent, Eurasia."

^"Australia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 22 August 2009. "Smallest continent and sixth largest country (in area) on Earth, lying between the Pacific and Indian oceans."

^"Islands". Geoscience Australia. Archived from the original on 23 April 2010. "Being surrounded by ocean, Australia often is referred to as an island continent. As a continental landmass it is significantly larger than the many thousands of fringing islands ..."

^The Australian Bureau of Statistics has stated that most who list "Australian" as their ancestry are part of the Anglo-Celtic group. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 20 April 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2008.

^Skinner, James; Zakus H., Dwight; Edwards, Allan (2013). "Coming in from the Margins: Ethnicity, Community Support and the Rebranding of Australian Soccer". In Adam, Brown. Football and Community in the Global Context: Studies in Theory and Practice. Routledge. pp. 92–93. ISBN9781317969051.

1.
Australia (continent)
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It is the smallest of the seven traditional continents in the English conception. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 BC, geologically, a continent extends to the edge of its continental shelf, so the now-separate islands are considered part of the continent. Due to the spread of animals, fungi and plants across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate lands have a related biota, New Zealand is not part of the continent of Australia, but of the separate, submerged continent of Zealandia. New Zealand and Australia are both part of the regions known as Australasia and Oceania. The term Oceania is often used to denote the region encompassing the Australian continent, with a total land area of 8.56 million square kilometres, the Australian continent is the smallest and lowest human inhabited continent on Earth. The continental shelf connecting the islands, half of which is less than 50 metres deep, covers some 2.5 million square kilometres, including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait. As the country of Australia is mostly on a single landmass, archaeological terminology for this region has changed repeatedly. In the early 1970s, the term Greater Australia was introduced for the Pleistocene continent, then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, the name Sahul was extended from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent. Others have used Meganesia with different meanings, travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zealand in his definition and others have used it for Australia, New Zealand, another biologist, Richard Dawkins, coined the name Australinea in 2004. Australia-New Guinea has also been used, the continent primarily sits on the Indo-Australian Plate. Because of its location on its tectonic plate Australia doesnt have any active volcanic regions. The lands were joined with Antarctica as part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana until the plate began to drift north about 96 million years ago, for most of the time since then, Australia–New Guinea remained a continuous landmass. When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait, separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the Australian mainland. A northern arc consisting of the New Guinea Highlands, the Raja Ampat Islands, the Outer Banda Arc was accreted along the northwestern edge the continent, it includes the islands of Timor, Tanimbar, and Seram. As the continent drifted north from Antarctica, a fauna, flora. Marsupials and monotremes also existed on other continents, but only in Australia–New Guinea did they out-compete the placental mammals, animal groups such as macropods, monotremes, and cassowaries are endemic to Australia. There were three reasons for the enormous diversity that developed in animal, fungal and plant life

2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

3.
Flag of Australia
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The flag of Australia is a defaced Blue Ensign, a blue field with the Union Jack in the canton, and a large white seven-pointed star known as the Commonwealth Star in the lower hoist quarter. The fly contains a representation of the Southern Cross constellation, made up of five white stars – one small five-pointed star and four, larger, there are other official flags representing Australia, its people and core functions of government. A slightly different design was approved by King Edward VII in 1903, the seven-pointed commonwealth star version was introduced by a proclamation dated 23 February 1908. The dimensions were formally gazetted in 1934, and in 1954 the flag recognised by, and legally defined in. Constituent parts of the flag of Australia The Australian flag uses three prominent symbols, the Union Flag, the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, the Commonwealth Star, also known as the Federation Star, originally had six points, representing the six federating colonies. In 1908, a point was added to symbolise the Papua. Another rationale for the change was to match the star used on the Coat of Arms, the Southern Cross is one of the most distinctive constellations visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and has been used to represent Australia since the early days of British settlement. Ivor Evans, one of the designers, intended the Southern Cross to also refer to the four moral virtues ascribed to the four main stars by Dante, justice, prudence, temperance. The stars are named after the first five letters of the Greek alphabet, in order to simplify manufacture, the British Admiralty standardised the four larger outer stars at seven points each, leaving the smaller, more central star with five points. This change was gazetted on 23 February 1903. A complete specification for the design was published in the Commonwealth Gazette in 1934. The location of the stars is as follows, Commonwealth Star – 7-pointed star, alpha Crucis – 7-pointed star, straight below centre fly 1⁄6 up from bottom edge. Beta Crucis – 7-pointed star, 1⁄4 of the way left, gamma Crucis – 7-pointed star, straight above centre fly 1⁄6 down from top edge. Delta Crucis – 7-pointed star, 2⁄9 of the way right, Epsilon Crucis – 5-pointed star, 1⁄10 of the way right and 1⁄24 down from the centre fly. The outer diameter of the Commonwealth Star is 3⁄10 of the width, while that of the stars in the Southern Cross is 1⁄7 of the flags width, except for Epsilon. Each stars inner diameter is 4⁄9 of the outer diameter, the flags width is the measurement of the hoist edge of the flag. The colours of the flag, although not specified by the Flags Act, have been given Pantone specifications by the Awards and Culture Branch of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Australian Governments Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers also gives CMYK and RGB specifications for depicting the flag in print and on screen respectively

4.
Coat of arms of Australia
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The coat of arms of Australia is the formal symbol of the Commonwealth of Australia. In the bottom half, from left to right, South Australia, Western Australia, above the shield is the seven-pointed Commonwealth Star or Star of Federation above a blue and gold wreath, forming the crest. Six of the points on the represent the original six states, while the seventh point represents the combined territories. In its entirety the shield represents the federation of Australia, the Red Kangaroo and Emu that support the shield have never been designated as official animal emblems of the nation. It is often claimed these animals were chosen because neither animal can move backward, in reality both animals can move backwards, although only infrequently. In the background is wreath of Golden Wattle, the national floral emblem. At the bottom of the coat of arms is a scroll that contains the name of the nation, neither the wreath of wattle nor the scroll are technically part of the design, because they are not described on the Royal Warrant that grants the armorial design. Following the federation of Australia, the first official coat of arms of Australia was granted by King Edward VII on 7 May 1908. The original design is thought to have inspired by the 1805 Bowman Flag. The selection of the kangaroo, the emu and the words, the Scottish Patriotic Association was vocally opposed to the shields design, noting that it should display the Union Flag to represent British and Irish settlers. These arms were used by the government and appeared on the coin from 1910 until 1963. The 1908 arms were redesigned in 1911, and officially granted by George V on 19 September 1912, the redesign of the coat of arms spurred much debate in Parliament. Despite objections, the kangaroo and emu now not having its leg up remained the shield bearers in the new coat of arms and were modified to more realistic. The principal reason for the redesign was the concern that Australias states were not individually represented, the new coat of arms removed the bed of grass beneath the shield and changed the scroll to read simply Australia. The colours in the wreath were also changed from blue and white to blue, the Commonwealth Coat of Arms is the formal symbol of the Commonwealth of Australia that signifies Commonwealth authority and ownership. The Arms are used by Australian Government departments and agencies, statutory and non-statutory authorities, senators and Federal Members of the Australian Parliament may also use the Arms in the course of their duties as Parliamentarians. The coat of arms should never be used where it could imply a formal guarantee. Use of the arms by private citizens or organisations is rarely permitted, however, there are provisions for use by sporting bodies and in educational publications

5.
Advance Australia Fair
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Advance Australia Fair is the national anthem of Australia. Created by the Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, the song was first performed in 1878 and it replaced God Save the Queen as the official national anthem in 1984, following a plebiscite to choose the national song in 1977. Other songs and marches have been influenced by Advance Australia Fair, Advance Australia Fair was composed in the late 19th century by Peter Dodds McCormick under the pen-name Amicus. It was first performed by Andrew Fairfax at a Highland Society function in Sydney on 30 November 1878, the song quickly gained popularity and an amended version was sung by a choir of around 10,000 at the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. In 1907 the Australian Government awarded McCormick £100 for his composition and this was very nicely done, but I felt very aggravated that there was not one note for Australia. On the way home in a bus, I concocted the first verse of my song & when I got home I set it to music. I first wrote it in the Tonic Sol-fa notation, then transcribed it into the Old Notation, & I tried it over on an instrument next morning, strange to say there has not been a note of it altered since. Some alteration has been made in the wording, but the sense is the same and it seemed to me to be like an inspiration, & I wrote the words & music with the greatest ease. Before its adoption as Australias national anthem, Advance Australia Fair had considerable use elsewhere, for example, Australias national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, used it to announce its news bulletins until 1952. It was also played at the start or end of official functions. Towards the end of World War II it was one of three played in certain picture theatres, along with God Save the King and the American national anthem. In 1951 there was a competition for a new national anthem to celebrate the jubilee of the Federation of Australia. The entry by the Austrian-born conductor Henry Krips, This Land of Mine, won the competition, until 1974 God Save the Queen was Australias national anthem. In 1973 the Whitlam government decided that the country needed an anthem that could represent Australia with distinction, the Australia Council for the Arts organised the contest, which was dubbed the Australian National Anthem Quest. The contest was held in two stages, the first seeking lyrics and the music, each having an A$5,000 prize for the winning entry. In 1974 the Whitlam government then performed a nationwide survey to determine the song to be sung on occasions of national significance. Conducted through the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it polled 60,000 people nationally, Advance Australia Fair was chosen and was enshrined as the national song, to be used on all occasions excepting those of a specifically regal nature. A spokesman for the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stated that the Government regarded the tune primarily as the national anthem, whitlams speechwriter Graham Freudenberg rejected this idea, on two grounds, one of which was that the status of the anthem was still tentative

6.
Australian Antarctic Territory
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The Australian Antarctic Territory is a part of Antarctica. It was claimed by the United Kingdom and placed under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1933 and it is the largest territory of Antarctica claimed by any nation. In 1961, the Antarctic Treaty came into force, as a result, only four other states recognise Australias claim to sovereignty in Antarctica. AAT consists of all the islands and territory south of 60°S and between 45°E and 160°E, except for Adélie Land, which divides the territory into Western AAT and it is bounded by Queen Maud Land in the West and by Ross Dependency in the East. The area is estimated at 5,896,500 km2, the territory is inhabited by the staff of research stations. The Australian Antarctic Division administers the area primarily by maintaining three year-round stations, which support research projects. Australia claims an Exclusive Economic Zone from the Australian Antarctic Territory, however, the Australian proclamation of an Antarctic EEZ is contested. The effect of Article IV of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty would seem to be that an EEZ cannot be claimed in relation to territory to which that Treaty applies, whaling in Australian Antarctic territorial waters is controversial and has received international attention. Anti-whaling protest groups, in particular Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, have been active within the Australian Antarctic territorial waters. Sea Shepherd small boat crews have had encounters with Japanese ships that claim to be on research expeditions while opponents argue this is only a cover for banned commercial whaling. The Australian Whale Sanctuary, in Australian Antarctic territory, is not recognised by the government of Japan, anti-whaling legislation passed by the Australian Government applies to Australian territorial waters. Active and closed stations in the territory, from West to East, The United Kingdom first claimed Victoria Land on 9 January 1841, in 1933, a British imperial order transferred most of the territory south of 60° S and between meridians 160° E and 45° E to Australia. C2004C00416 / Australian Antarctic Territory Acceptance Act 1933 The borders with Adélie Land were fixed definitively in 1938, in 1947, Britain transferred Heard Island and McDonald Islands to the territory. On 13 February 1954, Mawson Station was established as the first Australian station on the continent proper, Australias claim to sovereignty over the Australian Antarctic Territory is recognised by the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France and Norway. Neither Japan nor Spain recognise this claim, and Japan does not recognise the Australian claim to the Australian Antarctic territorial waters in which Japanese ships conduct whaling, during the early 1980s there was a brief debate in Australia on whether or not to allow mining on the mineral-rich continent. Several mining proposals have been discussed and have all been rejected, on the 9 August 2011, influential Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute, published a report warning Canberra against complacency when it comes to its claim. The global treaty banning resource exploitation becomes reviewable in 2041, and these include coal seams, manganese, iron and uranium, while Antarcticas forecast oil reserves are estimated as among the largest in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Lowys national security fellow Ellie Fogarty said in the paper that Australia cannot adequately patrol its claim and it also lacks an ice-breaking ship in the region

7.
Canberra
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Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of 381,488, it is Australias largest inland city, the city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory,280 km south-west of Sydney, and 660 km north-east of Melbourne. A resident of Canberra is known as a Canberran, the site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nations capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australias two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian cities, being a planned city outside of any state, similar to Washington, D. C. in the United States. Following an international contest for the design, a blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected. The Griffins plan featured geometric motifs such as circles, hexagons and triangles, the citys design was influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have earned Canberra the title of the bush capital. Although the Australian Capital Territory is now self-governing, the Commonwealth Government retains some influence through the National Capital Authority, the Australian Armys officer corps is trained at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and the Australian Defence Force Academy is also located in the capital. The ACT is independent of any state to prevent any one state from gaining an advantage by hosting the seat of Commonwealth power, the ACT has voting representation in the Commonwealth Parliament, and has its own independent Legislative Assembly and government, similar to the states. Compared to the averages, the unemployment rate is lower. Property prices are high, in part due to comparatively restrictive development regulations. An 1830s map of the region by Major Mitchell indeed does mark the Sullivans Creek floodplain between two mountains as Nganbra. Nganbra or Nganbira could readily have been anglicised to the name Canberry, survey plans of the district dated 1837 refer to the area as the Canberry Plain. Although popularly pronounced /ˈkænbərə/ or /ˈkænbɛrə/, the pronunciation at its official naming in 1913 was /ˈkæn. brə/. Before white settlement, the area in which Canberra would eventually be constructed was seasonally inhabited by Indigenous Australians, archaeological evidence of settlement in the region includes inhabited rock shelters, rock paintings and engravings, burial places, camps and quarry sites, and stone tools and arrangements. Artefacts suggests early human activity occurred at some point in the area 21,000 years previously, European exploration and settlement started in the Canberra area as early as the 1820s. There were four expeditions between 1820 and 1824, white settlement of the area probably dates from 1823, when a homestead or station was built on what is now the Acton peninsula by stockmen employed by Joshua John Moore. He formally applied to purchase the site on 16 December 1826, on 30 April 1827, Moore was told by letter that he could retain possession of 1,000 acres at Canberry. The European population in the Canberra area continued to grow throughout the 19th century

8.
Sydney
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Sydney /ˈsɪdni/ is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australias east coast, the metropolis surrounds the worlds largest natural harbour, residents of Sydney are known as Sydneysiders. The Sydney area has been inhabited by indigenous Australians for at least 30,000 years, the first British settlers, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, arrived in 1788 to found Sydney as a penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Since convict transportation ended in the century, the city has transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural. As at June 2016 Sydneys estimated population was 5,005,358, in the 2011 census,34 percent of the population reported having been born overseas, representing many different nationalities and making Sydney one of the most multicultural cities in the world. There are more than 250 different languages spoken in Sydney and about one-third of residents speak a language other than English at home and it is classified as an Alpha+ World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has a market economy with strengths in finance, manufacturing. Its gross regional product was $337 billion in 2013, the largest in Australia, there is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as one of Asia Pacifics leading financial hubs. Its natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, man-made attractions such as the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Tower and the Sydney Harbour Bridge are also well known to international visitors. The first people to inhabit the now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago, the earliest British settlers called them Eora people. Eora is the term the indigenous used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is from this place, prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans. Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan, the principal language groups were Darug, Guringai, and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells. Development has destroyed much of the citys history including that of the first inhabitants, there continues to be examples of rock art and engravings located in the protected Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The first meeting between the people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula. He noted in his journal that they were confused and somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors, Cook was on a mission of exploration and was not commissioned to start a settlement

9.
National language
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A national language is a that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with people and the territory they occupy. There is little consistency in the use of this term, one or more languages spoken as first languages in the territory of a country may be referred to informally or designated in legislation as national languages of the country. National and/or official languages are mentioned in over 150 world constitutions, the last is usually given the title of official language. Standard languages, such as Standard German, Standard French, and Standard Spanish, may serve as national, regional, National language and official language are best understood as two concepts or legal categories with ranges of meaning that may coincide, or may be intentionally separate. Stateless nations are not in the position to legislate an official language, some languages may be recognized popularly as national languages, while others may enjoy official recognition in use and/or promotion. Albanian is the language in Albania and Kosovo and a regional national language for parts of Macedonia. Arabic is the language in Algeria. Berber is also an official language, French has no official status but is widely used in education, business and the media. Andorras national language is Catalan, moreover Catalan is a language in several territories in Spain. Azerbaijan Azerbaijani language is the language in Azerbaijan. Australia has no language, but is largely monolingual with English being the de facto national language. A considerable proportion of first and second generation migrants are bilingual, according to Ethnologue, 81% of people spoke English at home, including L2 speakers. Other languages spoken at home included Chinese 2. 9%, Italian 1. 2%, Arabic 1. 1%, Greek 1%, Vietnamese 0. 9%, there were almost 400 languages spoken by Indigenous Australians prior to the arrival of Europeans. Only about 70 of these languages have survived and all but 30 of these are now endangered, bengali is the sole official language of Bangladesh. Bulgarian is the language in Bulgaria. Canadas official languages since the Official Languages Act of 1969 are English, Quebec nationalists consider Quebec French the national language of the Quebec nation. As well, two of Canadas northern territories legislate a variety of Indigenous languages, as these official languages are legislated at a territorial level, they can be construed as national languages. Notably the Cree language is spoken from Alberta to Labrador, Anishinaabemowin is spoken across central Canada, there are many languages spoken across China, with most people speaking one of several varieties of Chinese

10.
Australian English
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Australian English is a major variety of the English language, used throughout Australia. Although English has no status in the Constitution, Australian English is the countrys de facto official language and is the first language of the majority of the population. Australian English began to diverge from British English after the founding of the Colony of New South Wales in 1788 and was recognised as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the intermingling of early settlers from a variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles. Australian English differs from other varieties of English in vocabulary, accent, pronunciation, register, grammar, the earliest form of Australian English was first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the colony of New South Wales. This first generation of children created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation, the Australian-born children in the new colony were exposed to a wide range of dialects from all over the British Isles, in particular from Ireland and South East England. The native-born children of the created the new dialect from the speech they heard around them. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect was strong enough to blunt other patterns of speech, a quarter of the convicts were Irish. Many had been arrested in Ireland, and some in Great Britain, many, if not most, of the Irish spoke Irish and either no English at all, or spoke it poorly and rarely. There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking part of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands, anthony Burgess writes that Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era. According to linguist Bruce Moore, the input of the various sounds that went into constructing the Australian accent was from south-east England. Some elements of Aboriginal languages have adopted by Australian English—mainly as names for places, flora and fauna. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as kangaroo, boomerang, budgerigar, wallaby, other examples are cooee and hard yakka. The former is used as a call, for attracting attention. Cooee is also a distance, if hes within cooee. Hard yakka means hard work and is derived from yakka, from the Jagera/Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region, also of Aboriginal origin is the word bung, from the Sydney pidgin English, meaning dead, with some extension to broken or useless. Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra, named after a local word meaning meeting place

11.
Demonym
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A demonym is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place. It is a neologism, previously gentilic was recorded in English dictionaries, e. g. the Oxford English Dictionary, thus a Thai may be any resident or citizen of Thailand, of any ethnic group, or more narrowly a member of the Thai people. Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms, for example, a native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person, a Brit, or a Briton. In some languages, when a parallel demonym does not exist, in English, demonyms are capitalized and are often the same as the adjectival form of the place, e. g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. Significant exceptions exist, for instance the adjectival form of Spain is Spanish, English widely includes country-level demonyms such as Ethiopian or Guatemalan and more local demonyms such as Seoulite, Wisconsinite, Chicagoan, Michigander, Fluminense, and Paulista. Some places lack a commonly used and accepted demonym and this poses a particular challenge to those toponymists who research demonyms. The word gentilic comes from the Latin gentilis and the English suffix -ic, the word demonym was derived from the Greek word meaning populace with the suffix for name. National Geographic attributes the term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a recent work from 1990 and it was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals. However, in What Do You Call a Person From, a Dictionary of Resident Names attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names Names, A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, which is apparently where the term first appears. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language, the most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. Cairo → Cairene Cyrenaica → Cyrene Damascus → Damascene Greece → Greek Nazareth → Nazarene Slovenia → Slovene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. Kingston-upon-Hull → Hullensian Leeds → Leodensian Spain → Spaniard Savoy → Savoyard -ese is usually considered proper only as an adjective, thus, a Chinese person is used rather than a Chinese. Monaco → Monégasque Menton → Mentonasque Basque Country → Basque Often used for French locations, mostly they are from Africa and the Pacific, and are not generally known or used outside the country concerned. In much of East Africa, a person of an ethnic group will be denoted by a prefix. For example, a person of the Luba people would be a Muluba, the plural form Baluba, similar patterns with minor variations in the prefixes exist throughout on a tribal level. And Fijians who are indigenous Fijians are known as Kaiviti and these demonyms are usually more informal and colloquial. In the United States such informal demonyms frequently become associated with mascots of the sports teams of the state university system. In other countries the origins are often disputed and these will typically be formed using the standard models above

12.
Australians
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Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are people associated with Australia, sharing a common history, culture, and language. Present-day Australians are citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, governed by its nationality law, the majority of Australians descend from the peoples of the British Isles. Many early settlements were penal colonies, and transported convicts made up a significant proportion of the population in most colonies, large-scale immigration did not occur until the 1850s, following a series of gold rushes. Prior to British settlement, Australia was inhabited by indigenous peoples – Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal Tasmanians, and Torres Strait Islanders. A small percentage of present-day Australians descend from these peoples, the development of a separate Australian identity and national character is most often linked with the period surrounding the First World War, which gave rise to the concept of the Anzac spirit. The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 and various events of the Second World War, large-scale immigration occurred after the First and Second World Wars, with many post-World War II migrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe introducing a variety of elements. Immigration from the Middle East, south and east Asia, Australian culture has diverged significantly since British settlement. Australians are referred to as Aussie and Antipodean, Australians were historically referred to as Colonials, British and British subjects. Australian identity draws on a multicultural, European and British cultural heritage, today, Australians of Anglo and other European descent are the dominant majority in Australia, estimated at 85–92% of the total population. Historically, European immigrants had great influence over Australian history and society, since soon after the beginning of British settlement in 1788, people of European descent have formed the majority of the population in Australia. The majority of Australians are of British – English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, or Manx –, although some observers stress Australias convict history, the vast majority of early settlers came of their own free will. Far more Australians are descended from assisted immigrants than from convicts, about 20% of Australians are descendants of convicts. Most of the first Australian settlers came from London, the Midlands and the North of England, anglo-Celtic Australians have been highly influential in shaping the nations culture. By the mid-1840s, the numbers of settlers had overtaken the convict population. In 1888,60 percent of the Australian population had been born in Australia, out of the remaining 40 percent,34 percent had been born in the British Isles, and 6 percent were of European origin, mainly from Germany and Scandinavia. In the 1840s, Scots-born immigrants constituted 12 percent of the Australian population, there were 1.3 million British migrants to Australia in the period from 1861–1914, of which 13.5 percent were Scots. 5.3 percent of the convicts transported to Eastern Australia between 1789 and 1852 were Scots, by 1850, there were 290,000 Aboriginal Australians. The European population grew from 0.3 percent of the population of the continent at 1800 to 58.6 percent at 1850, germans formed the largest non-British community for most of the 19th century

13.
Politics of Australia
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The politics of Australia takes place within the framework of a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Australia largely operates as a two-party system in which voting is compulsory, the Parliament of Australia, also known as the Commonwealth Parliament or Federal Parliament, is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It is bicameral, and has influenced both by the Westminster system and United States federalism. Under Section 1 of the Constitution of Australia, Parliament consists of three components, the Monarch, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, the Australian Parliament is the worlds sixth oldest continuous democracy. Voting within each electorate utilises the instant-runoff system of preferential voting, the party or coalition of parties which commands the confidence of a majority of members of the House of Representatives forms government. The Australian Senate has 76 members, the six states return twelve senators each, and the two mainland territories return two senators each, elected through the single transferable voting system. Senators are elected for flexible terms not exceeding six years, with half of the senators contesting at each federal election, as such, the Senate has the power to bring down the government, as occurred during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. Such deadlocks are resolved under section 57 of the Constitution, under a procedure called a double dissolution election. Such elections are rare, not because the conditions for holding them are seldom met, of the six double dissolution elections that have been held since federation, half have resulted in the fall of a government. The most recent double dissolution election was in July 2016, with the government holding a slim majority, arguably, the trigger bills did not have much prominence throughout the campaign. The role of head of state in Australia is divided between two people, the monarch of Australia and the Governor-General of Australia. The functions and roles of the Governor-General include appointing ambassadors, ministers, the Governor-General is the President of the Federal Executive Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force. These posts are held under the authority of the Australian Constitution, in practice, barring exceptional circumstances, the Governor-General exercises these powers only on the advice of the Prime-Minister. As such, the role of Governor-General is often described as a ceremonial position. The Prime Minister of Australia is Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the Cabinet and head of government, the office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful political office in Australia. Despite being at the apex of executive government in the country, barring exceptional circumstances, the prime minister is always the leader of the political party or coalition with majority support in the House of Representatives. The only case where a senator was appointed minister was that of John Gorton. The Cabinet of Australia is the council of ministers responsible to Parliament

14.
Federalism
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Federalism is the mixed or compound mode of government, combining a general government with regional governments in a single political system. It can thus be defined as a form of government in there is a division of powers between two levels of government of equal status. Leading examples of the federation or federal state include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, some also today characterize the European Union as the pioneering example of federalism in a multi-state setting, in a concept termed the federal union of states. The terms federalism and confederalism both have a root in the Latin word foedus, meaning treaty, pact or covenant and their common meaning until the late eighteenth century was a simple league or inter-governmental relationship among sovereign states based upon a treaty. It was in this sense that James Madison in Federalist 39 had referred to the new United States as neither a national nor a federal Constitution, thus, this article relates to the modern usage of the word federalism. Modern federalism is a based upon democratic rules and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments. The term federalist describes several political beliefs around the world depending on context, however, in some countries, those skeptical of federal prescriptions believe that increased regional autonomy is likely to lead to secession or dissolution of the nation. In Syria, federalization proposals have failed in part because Syrians fear that these borders could turn out to be the same as the ones that the parties have currently carved out. Federations such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia collapsed as soon as it was possible to put the model to the test, cultural-historical theories, which hold that federal institutions are more likely to be adopted in societies with culturally or ethnically fragmented populations. Infrastructural power theories, which hold that federalism is likely to emerge when the subunits of a potential federation already have highly developed infrastructures. In Europe, Federalist is sometimes used to describe those who favor a federal government. Most European federalists want this development to continue within the European Union, European federalism originated in post-war Europe, one of the more important initiatives was Winston Churchills speech in Zürich in 1946. In the United States, federalism originally referred to belief in a central government. Constitution was being drafted, the Federalist Party supported a central government. This is very different from the usage of federalism in Europe. The distinction stems from the fact that federalism is situated in the middle of the spectrum between a confederacy and a unitary state. Constitution was written as a reaction to the Articles of Confederation, in contrast, Europe has a greater history of unitary states than North America, thus European federalism argues for a weaker central government, relative to a unitary state. The modern American usage of the word is closer to the European sense

15.
Parliamentary system
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In a parliamentary system, the head of state is usually a different person from the head of government. Since ancient times, when societies were tribal, there were councils or a headman whose decisions were assessed by village elders, eventually these councils have slowly evolved into the modern Parliamentary system. The first parliaments date back to Europe in the Middle Ages, for example in 1188 Alfonso IX, the modern concept of parliamentary government emerged in the Kingdom of Great Britain and its contemporary, the Parliamentary System in Sweden. In England, Simon de Montfort is remembered as one of the fathers of representative government for holding two famous parliaments, the first, in 1258, stripped the King of unlimited authority and the second, in 1265, included ordinary citizens from the towns. Later, in the 17th century, the Parliament of England pioneered some of the ideas and systems of liberal democracy culminating in the Glorious Revolution, in the Kingdom of Great Britain, the monarch, in theory, chaired cabinet and chose ministers. In practice, King George Is inability to speak English led the responsibility for chairing cabinet to go to the minister, literally the prime or first minister. By the nineteenth century, the Great Reform Act of 1832 led to parliamentary dominance, with its choice invariably deciding who was prime minister, hence the use of phrases like Her Majestys government or His Excellencys government. Nineteenth century urbanisation, industrial revolution and, modernism had already fueled the political struggle for democracy. In the radicalised times at the end of World War I, a parliamentary system may be either bicameral, with two chambers of parliament or unicameral, with just one parliamentary chamber. Scholars of democracy such as Arend Lijphart distinguish two types of parliamentary democracies, the Westminster and Consensus systems, the Westminster system is usually found in the Commonwealth of Nations and countries which were influenced by the British political tradition. These parliaments tend to have a more style of debate. The Australian House of Representatives is elected using instant-runoff voting, while the Senate is elected using proportional representation through single transferable vote, regardless of which system is used, the voting systems tend to allow the voter to vote for a named candidate rather than a closed list. The Western European parliamentary model tends to have a more consensual debating system, Consensus systems have more of a tendency to use proportional representation with open party lists than the Westminster Model legislatures. The committees of these Parliaments tend to be more important than the plenary chamber, some West European countries parliaments implement the principle of dualism as a form of separation of powers. In countries using this system, Members of Parliament have to resign their place in Parliament upon being appointed minister, ministers in those countries usually actively participate in parliamentary debates, but are not entitled to vote. Some countries such as India also require the prime minister to be a member of the legislature, the head of state appoints a prime minister who will likely have majority support in parliament. The head of state appoints a minister who must gain a vote of confidence within a set time. The head of state appoints the leader of the party holding a plurality of seats in parliament as prime minister

16.
Constitutional monarchy
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A constitutional monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the sovereign exercises their authorities in accordance with a written or unwritten constitution. A constitutional monarchy may refer to a system in which the acts as a non-party political head of state under the constitution. Political scientist Vernon Bogdanor, paraphrasing Thomas Macaulay, has defined a constitutional monarch as a sovereign who reigns, in addition to acting as a visible symbol of national unity, a constitutional monarch may hold formal powers such as dissolving parliament or giving royal assent to legislation. Many constitutional monarchies still retain significant authorities or political influence however, such as through certain reserve powers, the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms are all constitutional monarchies in the Westminster tradition of constitutional governance. Three states – Malaysia, Cambodia and the Holy See – are elective monarchies, the oldest constitutional monarchy dating back to ancient times was that of the Hittites. These were scattered noble families that worked as representatives of their subjects in an adjutant or subaltern federal-type landscape, the most recent country to move from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy was Bhutan, between 2007 and 2008. At the same time, in Scotland the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim of Right Act 1689, although Queen Anne was the last monarch to veto an Act of Parliament when in 1707 she blocked the Scottish Militia Bill, Hanoverian monarchs continued to selectively dictate government policies. For instance George III constantly blocked Catholic Emancipation, eventually precipitating the resignation of William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister in 1801, Queen Victoria was the last monarch to exercise real personal power but this diminished over the course of her reign. In 1839 she became the last sovereign to keep a Prime Minister in power against the will of Parliament when the Bedchamber crisis resulted in the retention of Lord Melbournes administration, today, the role of the British monarch is by convention effectively ceremonial. No person may accept significant public office without swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen, with few exceptions, the monarch is bound by constitutional convention to act on the advice of the Government. Constitutional monarchy also occurred briefly in the years of the French Revolution. As originally conceived, a monarch was head of the executive branch and quite a powerful figure even though his or her power was limited by the constitution. In many cases the monarchs, while still at the top of the political and social hierarchy, were given the status of servants of the people to reflect the new. In the course of Frances July Monarchy, Louis-Philippe I was styled King of the French rather than King of France, following the Unification of Germany, Otto von Bismarck rejected the British model. However this model of constitutional monarchy was discredited and abolished following Germanys defeat in the First World War. Later, Fascist Italy could also be considered as a constitutional monarchy and this eventually discredited the Italian monarchy and led to its abolition in 1946. After the Second World War, surviving European monarchies almost invariably adopted some variant of the constitutional monarchy model originally developed in Britain, nowadays a parliamentary democracy that is a constitutional monarchy is considered to differ from one that is a republic only in detail rather than in substance. However, three important factors distinguish monarchies such as the United Kingdom from systems where greater power might otherwise rest with Parliament, other privileges may be nominal or ceremonial

17.
Monarchy of Australia
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The monarchy of Australia is a form of government in which a hereditary king or queen serves as the nations sovereign. The present monarch is Elizabeth II, styled Queen of Australia and she is represented in Australia by the governor-general, in accordance with the Australian constitution and letters patent from the Queen. In each of the states, the monarch is represented by a governor, the Australian monarch, besides reigning in Australia, separately serves as monarch for each of 15 other Commonwealth nations known as realms. This developed from the colonial relationship between these countries and the United Kingdom, but they are now independent of each other and are legally distinct. Likewise, on all matters relating to any Australian state, the monarch is advised by the ministers of the Crown of that state, the British government is thus considered a foreign power in regard to Australias domestic and foreign affairs. The sovereigns Australian title is currently Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth. Typically, the monarch is styled King or Queen of Australia and is addressed as such when in Australia or performing duties on behalf of Australia abroad, prior to 1953, the title had simply been the same as that in the United Kingdom. Australia, however, wished to have the United Kingdom mentioned as well, thus, the resolution was a title that included the United Kingdom but, for the first time, also separately mentioned Australia and the other Commonwealth realms. The passage of a new Royal Style and Titles Act by the Parliament of Australia put these recommendations into law, Queen Elizabeth II signed her assent at Government House, Canberra, on 19 October 1973. Australia does not pay any money to the Queen, either for personal income or to support the royal residences outside Australia, only when the Queen is in Australia does the Australian government support her in the performance of her duties. This rule applies equally to members of the Royal Family. Succession is according to British laws that have incorporated into Australian law. By adhering to the Statute of Westminster in 1942, Australia agreed to change its rules of only in agreement with the UK. Parallel proclamations are made by the governors in each state, regardless of any proclamations, the late sovereigns heir immediately and automatically succeeds, without any need for confirmation or further ceremony. After an individual ascends the throne, he or she continues to reign until death. The legal personality of a component of the Australian state is expressed by reference to the sovereign. In criminal prosecutions, the state as a party is named as The Queen—for instance. However, the prosecutors themselves are referred to as representing the Crown, more commonly and conveniently, however, the entity is referred to directly—for example, as The Commonwealth or The State of New South Wales or simply New South Wales

18.
Elizabeth II
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Elizabeth II has been Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since 6 February 1952. Elizabeth was born in London as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and her father acceded to the throne on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII in 1936, from which time she was the heir presumptive. She began to undertake duties during the Second World War. Elizabeths many historic visits and meetings include a visit to the Republic of Ireland. She has seen major changes, such as devolution in the United Kingdom, Canadian patriation. She has reigned through various wars and conflicts involving many of her realms and she is the worlds oldest reigning monarch as well as Britains longest-lived. In October 2016, she became the longest currently reigning monarch, in 2017 she became the first British monarch to commemorate a Sapphire Jubilee. Elizabeth has occasionally faced republican sentiments and press criticism of the family, however, support for the monarchy remains high. Elizabeth was born at 02,40 on 21 April 1926, during the reign of her paternal grandfather and her father, Prince Albert, Duke of York, was the second son of the King. Her mother, Elizabeth, Duchess of York, was the youngest daughter of Scottish aristocrat Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and she was delivered by Caesarean section at her maternal grandfathers London house,17 Bruton Street, Mayfair. Elizabeths only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930, the two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as Crawfie. Lessons concentrated on history, language, literature and music, Crawford published a biography of Elizabeth and Margarets childhood years entitled The Little Princesses in 1950, much to the dismay of the royal family. The book describes Elizabeths love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, others echoed such observations, Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant and her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved. During her grandfathers reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, the Duke of York. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, many people believed that he would marry and have children of his own. When her grandfather died in 1936 and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second-in-line to the throne, later that year, Edward abdicated, after his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Consequently, Elizabeths father became king, and she became heir presumptive, if her parents had had a later son, she would have lost her position as first-in-line, as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession

19.
Governor-General of Australia
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The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia of the Australian monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. The Governor-General is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister of Australia, when travelling abroad, the Governor-General is seen as the representative of Australia, and of the Queen of Australia, so is treated as a head of state. The Governor-General is supported by a staff headed by the Official Secretary to the Governor-General, a Governor-General is not appointed for a specific term, but is generally expected to serve for five years subject to a possible short extension. Since 28 March 2014, the Governor-General has been General Sir Peter Cosgrove, from Federation in 1901 until 1965,11 out of the 15 Governors-General were British aristocrats, they included four barons, three viscounts, three earls, and one prince. Since then, all but one of the Governors-General have been Australian-born, as of 2017, only one Governor-General, Dame Quentin Bryce, was a woman. The selection of a Governor-General is a responsibility for the Prime Minister of Australia, the candidate is approached privately to confirm whether they are willing to accept the appointment. The prime minister advises the monarch to appoint his nominee. This has been the procedure since November 1930, when James Scullins proposed appointment of Sir Isaac Isaacs was fiercely opposed by the British government, Scullin was equally insistent that the monarch must act on the relevant prime ministers direct advice. Both of these appointments had been agreed to despite British government objections, despite these precedents, George V remained reluctant to accept Scullins recommendation of Isaacs and asked him to consider Field Marshal Sir William Birdwood. However, Scullin stood firm, and, on 29 November, the King agreed to Isaacss appointment and this right to not only advise the monarch directly, but also to expect that advice to be accepted, was soon taken up by all the other Dominion prime ministers. This, among other things, led to the Statute of Westminster 1931, having agreed to the appointment, the monarch then permits it to be publicly announced in advance, usually several months before the end of the current Governor-Generals term. During these months, the person is referred to as the Governor-General-designate, the actual appointment is made by the monarch. Governors-General have during their tenure the style His/Her Excellency the Honourable, since May 2013, the style used by a former Governor-General is the Honourable, it was at the same time retrospectively granted for life to all previous holders of the office. From the creation of the Order of Australia in 1975, the Governor-General was, ex officio, Chancellor and Principal Companion of the Order, and therefore became entitled to the post-nominal AC. In 1986 the Letters Patent were amended again, and Governors-General appointed from that time were again, ex officio, until 1989, all Governors-General were members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and thus held the additional style the Right Honourable for life. The same individuals were also usually either peers, knights, or both, in 1989, Bill Hayden, a republican, declined appointment to the British Privy Council and any imperial honours. Dame Quentin Bryce was the first Governor-General to have had no title or pre-nominal style. Until 2015, the honour continued after the retirement from office of the Governor-General, formerly, the Governor-General automatically became a knight or dame upon being sworn in

20.
Peter Cosgrove
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General Sir Peter John Cosgrove, AK, MC is a retired senior Australian Army officer and the 26th and current Governor-General of Australia. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Cosgrove fought in the Vietnam War, from 1983 to 1984, he was commander of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, and he later served as commander of the 6th Brigade and the 1st Division. Cosgrove rose to prominence in 1999, when he served as commander of the International Force for East Timor, Cosgrove was Australias Chief of Army from 2000 to 2002, and then Chief of the Defence Force from 2002 to 2005, receiving corresponding promotions to lieutenant general and general. In January 2014, Cosgrove was named to succeed Dame Quentin Bryce as Governor-General of Australia and he was sworn in on 28 March 2014, and created a Knight of the Order of Australia on the same date. Cosgrove was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 28 July 1947 and he was educated at Waverley College in Sydney, then followed his father, a warrant officer, into the Australian Army by attending the Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1965. Lieutenant Peter Cosgrove was commissioned on 11 December 1968 and was allotted to the Royal Australian Infantry and he arrived in Vietnam on 3 August 1969 and was posted to 9th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment on 20 August 1969. On 10 October 1969, Lieutenant Cosgrove was commanding 5 Platoon, the platoon located an occupied bunker system in an area where, because of the proximity of allied troops, indirect fire support was difficult to obtain. In spite of this, he led his platoon in an assault on the bunkers without indirect fire support, capturing the system, on 16 October 1969,5 Platoon located another bunker system occupied by about a platoon of enemy. Lieutenant Cosgrove silently deployed his own platoon for an attack and his assault completely surprised the enemy causing them to flee, abandoning large quantities of food, stores and documents. The following day in the bunker system a party of enemy approached his right forward section and was engaged by the sentry. Knowing that the remainder of the section was elsewhere on other tasks, Lieutenant Cosgrove ran to the contact area, as a result of his actions, two enemy were killed and three weapons and four packs containing rice were captured. He was awarded the Military Cross for these actions, in 1980 he was awarded the National Medal. In the mid-1980s he commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Cosgrove came to national fame in 1999 when, as a major general, he led the international forces in a peacekeeping mission to East Timor. The missions success made him one of Australias most respected and popular military leaders and he was promoted in 2000 to lieutenant general as Chief of the Army and in 2002 to general as Chief of the Defence Force. In 2004, the Foreign Minister Alexander Downer queried the judgement of Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. Following a joint interview with the then Defence Minister Robert Hill, Cosgrove was accused of playing politics when he said that, on this occasion, however, Cosgrove expressed strong support for the Police Commissioner in his Australian best selling autobiography, My Story, published in 2006. On 3 July 2005, Cosgroves three-year appointment as Chief of the Defence Force was completed, Cosgrove served on the board of Australias main airline Qantas between July 2005 and January 2014 and is on numerous other boards as chairman or member. He served as Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University between November 2010 and January 2014, and is Honorary Patron in Chief of the ACT Veterans Rugby Club, Peter Cosgrove was appointed as Patron to the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard Association in 2015

21.
Prime Minister of Australia
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The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the head of government of Australia. The individual who holds the office is the most senior Minister of the Crown, the leader of the Cabinet, the office is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia and exists only through longstanding political convention and tradition. Despite this, in practice it is the most powerful position in Australia. The individual who holds the office is commissioned by the Governor-General of Australia, almost always and according to convention, the Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party or largest party in a coalition of parties in the House of Representatives. However, there is no requirement that the prime minister sit in the House of Representatives. The only case where a member of the Senate was appointed minister was John Gorton. Malcolm Turnbull has held the office of Prime Minister since 15 September 2015, the Prime Minister and Treasurer are traditionally members of the House, but the Constitution does not have such a requirement. Before being sworn in as a Minister of the Crown, a person must first be sworn in as a member of the Federal Executive Council if they are not already a member. Membership of the Federal Executive Council entitles the member to the style of The Honourable for life, the senior members of the Executive Council constitute the Cabinet of Australia. The Prime Minister is, like ministers, normally sworn in by the Governor-General. When defeated in an election, or on resigning, the Prime Minister is said to hand in the commission, in the event of a Prime Minister dying in office, or becoming incapacitated, the Governor-General can terminate the commission. Despite the importance of the office of minister, the Constitution does not mention the office by name. The conventions of the Westminster system were thought to be entrenched in Australia by the authors of the Constitution that it was deemed unnecessary to detail them. The formal title of the portfolio has always been simply Prime Minister, except for the period of the Fourth Deakin Ministry, Page was the leader of the smaller party in the governing coalition, the Country Party. He held the office for three weeks until the UAP elected a new leader, Robert Menzies, in August 1941 Menzies resigned as prime minister. In July 1945 John Curtin died suddenly and his deputy, Frank Forde, was sworn in the next day as prime minister, although the Labor Party had not had an opportunity to meet and elect a new leader. Forde served for eight days until Ben Chifley was elected leader, Chifley was then sworn in, replacing Forde, who became Australias shortest-serving prime minister. Harold Holt disappeared while swimming on 17 December 1967 and was declared presumed dead on 19 December, the governor-general, Lord Casey, commissioned the Leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, to form a government until the Liberal Party elected a new leader

22.
Malcolm Turnbull
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Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is the 29th and current Prime Minister of Australia. The Turnbull Government was re-elected at the 2016 federal election though with a bare one-seat majority, Turnbull attended Sydney Grammar School before going to the University of Sydney, where he attained a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws. Turnbull then attended Brasenose College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, elevated to the Howard Cabinet in January 2007, he briefly served as Minister for the Environment and Water. Following the defeat of the Liberal Government at the 2007 federal election, Turnbull declared himself a candidate in the subsequent leadership election, following a period of poor opinion polling, Turnbull challenged and defeated Nelson by four votes and became Leader of the Opposition. This led to persistent tensions within the Liberal Party, with Turnbulls support for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed by the Rudd Government in late 2009 eventually causing a split. Tony Abbott, who was opposed to the Scheme, subsequently challenged Turnbull, Turnbull was subsequently sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia the following day and formed the Turnbull Government. However, at the closest federal majority result since the 1961 election, Malcolm Turnbull was born in Sydney on 24 October 1954 to Bruce Bligh Turnbull and Coral Magnolia Lansbury. Turnbulls maternal grandmother, May Lansbury, was born in England, Turnbulls father was a hotel broker. Turnbulls mother was an actor, a writer, an academic. Turnbull suffered asthma as a young child, Turnbulls parents separated when he was nine, with Turnbulls mother leaving first for New Zealand, and then the United States. Turnbull was then raised by his father, Turnbull is of direct paternal Scottish descent, his great-great-great grandfather John Turnbull arrived in 1802 in New South Wales and became a tailor. During his childhood, he practised Presbyterianism before becoming a Roman Catholic, Turnbull spent his first three years of school at Vaucluse Public School. He then attended the St Ives preparatory school at Sydney Grammar School as a boarder, in senior school he was a boarder at the former Randwick campus of the school while attending classes at the main College Street campus on a partial scholarship. He was senior school co-captain in 1972, as well as winning the Lawrence Campbell Oratory Competition, excelling particularly in the subjects such as English. However, contrary to certain sources, Turnbull was not the dux of his year at Sydney Grammar. In 1987, in memory of his father, he set up the Bruce Turnbull means-tested scholarship at Sydney Grammar. In 1973, Turnbull attended the University of Sydney and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977, during his studies, he was active in student politics, serving as board director of the University of Sydney Union. He also worked as a political journalist for Nation Review, Radio 2SM, in 1978, Turnbull won a Rhodes Scholarship and attended Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied for a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from 1978 to 1980, graduating with honours

23.
Chief Justice of Australia
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The Chief Justice of Australia is the informal title for the presiding justice of the High Court of Australia and the highest-ranking judicial officer in the Commonwealth of Australia. The incumbent is Susan Kiefel, the first woman to hold the office, the Court was constituted by, and its first members were appointed under, the Judiciary Act 1903, with the first appointments to the High Court commencing on 5 October 1903. The Chief Justice is first among equals among the Justices of the High Court, all Justices, including the Chief Justice, are appointed by the Governor-General of Australia, on the advice of the federal government. They can be removed only by the Governor-General, on a request from both houses of the parliament, although this has never been done. Since 1977, appointment has been until the retirement age of seventy. The Chief Justice often acts as the Governor-Generals deputy, especially at such as the opening of Parliament after an election. Chief Justice Samuel Griffith was several times consulted by Governors-General of Australia on the exercise of the reserve powers, the Chief Justice also administers the Oath of Allegiance to the Monarch and an Oath of Office to the Governor-General-designate when he or she takes up his or her appointment. Chief Justice Sir John Latham was absent from the office when he served from 1940 to 1941 as Australias first ambassador to Japan, Sir George Rich was Acting Chief Justice in Lathams absence

24.
Susan Kiefel
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Susan Mary Kiefel AC is the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian court hierarchy. She became the Chief Justice of Australia on 30 January 2017 and is the first woman to have appointed to that role. Kiefel has served on the High Court since 2007, having previously been a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland, Susan Kiefel was born in Cairns, Queensland in 1954. She briefly attended Sandgate District State High School, leaving at the age of 15 upon completing Year 10, in 1971, she completed secretarial training at Kangaroo Point Technical College on a scholarship. She worked as a secretary for a society, an architect. During this time, she completed secondary school and began studying law, in 1973, Kiefel joined solicitors Cannan and Peterson as a legal clerk. Completing her education at night, she enrolled in the Barristers Admission Board course and passed her course with honours. In 1984, while on leave, she completed a Master of Laws at the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded the C. J. Hamson Prize in Comparative Law. In 2008, she was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Kiefel was admitted to the bar in 1975. She became a secretary of the Queensland Bar Association in 1978. She was appointed as the first female Queens Counsel in Queensland in 1987 and was appointed to the Human Rights, in May 1993, Kiefel was appointed to the Supreme Court of Queensland. In October 2001, Kiefel was appointed Deputy President of the Australian Federal Police Disciplinary Tribunal, in 2003, Kiefel was appointed as a part-time commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission, and was re-appointed for a further three years in 2006. In August 2009, Justice Kiefel was granted an Honorary Doctorate from Griffith University, Justice Kiefel was chosen to recognise her distinguished contributions to the legal profession and for leading the way for women in the industry. On 13 August 2007, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock announced Kiefel as the nominee to the High Court of Australia to replace the retiring High Court Justice Ian Callinan. Kiefel had previously considered a favourite nominee to replace former High Court Justice Mary Gaudron when she retired in 2003. Kiefel is the third female High Court Justice and the forty sixth overall and her appointment alongside incumbent Justice Susan Crennan marked the first time two women sat concurrently on the High Court bench. Kiefels nomination was met with support from the Australian Bar Association amid criticism of the lack of consultation by the Australian government and she was considered a conservative black-letter judge. She may remain on the High Court until 2024, when she reach the constitutionally mandatory retirement age of 70

25.
President of the Senate (Australia)
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The President of the Australian Senate is the presiding officer of the Australian Senate, the upper house of the Parliament of Australia. The presiding officer of the house, the House of Representatives, is the Speaker. The Senate has always been an elected body. Since 7 July 2014, the President has been Stephen Parry, the Deputy President is Sue Lines. The President shall cease to hold his office if he ceases to be a senator and he may be removed from office by a vote of the Senate, or he may resign his office or his seat by writing addressed to the Governor-General. The President is elected by the Senate in a secret ballot, the President is assisted by an elected Deputy President. The traditional practice has been that the government nominates a Senator to be elected as President, neither Government nor Opposition Senators supported that candidacy. The position of President has been held by Senators representing the least populous states and territories. There have been 24 presidents of the Senate since 1901, of these 15 have come from the least populous states or the Australian Capital Territory, and 9 have come from the three most populous states. Following the election of the Howard government at the 1996 election, Labors Mal Colston became an independent MP, unlike the Speaker the President has a deliberative, but not a casting vote. This is because the Senate is in theory a states house, the Presidents principal duty is to preside over the Senate, to maintain order in the Senate, uphold the Standing Orders and protect the rights of backbench Senators. He or she is assisted by the Deputy President and a panel of Acting Deputy presidents, the President, in conjunction with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, also administers Parliament House, Canberra, with the assistance of administrative staff. The President has accountability obligations to the Parliament for the Department of the Senate, clerk of the Australian Senate The President of the Senate, Senate Brief No 6, March 2017

26.
Scott Ryan (Australian politician)
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Scott Michael Ryan is an Australian politician. He has been a Senator representing the state of Victoria for the Liberal Party of Australia since the 2007 federal election, Ryan has served as the Special Minister of State since July 2016 and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cabinet since January 2017 in the Turnbull Government. Ryan was born on 28 August 1973 in Brisbane, Queensland and he was educated at St Kevins College, Melbourne and graduated from the University of Melbourne, with a Bachelor of Arts. While at university, he served as President of the Melbourne University Liberal Club and was a member of the Australian Liberal Students Federation and he started his career as a tutor of political science at St Marys College, a constituent college of the University of Melbourne. He then worked in corporate affairs for pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and he also worked as a speechwriter and political advisor. In 2008, he was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Ryan was a member of the executive of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, holding the office of Vice President. He has been a Liberal member of the Australian Senate since July 2008 and he was elected to serve a six-year term in the Senate at the 2007 federal election, after being preselected in the third position on the Coalition ticket in Victoria. In 2016, he was elected to serve a six-year term. Ryan served as the Minister for Vocational Education and Skills following a rearrangement in the First Turnbull Ministry and they have a son and reside in Melbourne. Parliamentary info page Summary of parliamentary voting for Senator Scott Ryan on TheyVoteForYou. org. au

27.
Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives
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The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the presiding officer of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Parliament of Australia. The presiding officer in the house is the President of the Senate. The office of Speaker was created by section 35 of the Constitution of Australia, the authors of the Constitution intended that the House of Representatives should as nearly as possible be modelled on the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Speaker is the officer of House of Representatives debates. The Speaker is also responsible for maintaining order during debate, the office of Speaker is currently held by Tony Smith since 10 August 2015. The Deputy Speaker is Mark Coulton, who was elected Deputy Speaker on 30 August 2016, if the Speaker is absent the Deputy Speaker becomes the Acting Speaker. The Second Deputy Speaker is Rob Mitchell, the Clerk of the Australian House of Representatives conducts the election. In accordance with longstanding tradition, the MPs who move and second the nomination of the successful candidate drag him or her to the chair after his election, unlike the Speaker of the House of Commons in Britain, the Speaker generally remains an active member of their party. If a party member, the Speaker will continue to party meetings. There were two exceptions to this, the first Speaker, Frederick Holder and Peter Slipper, who resigned from their respective parties upon election as Speaker, and sat as independents. A Speaker ceases to hold office if, for any reason. Because the Speaker is always the nominee of the governing party, while the Opposition usually nominates one of its own members for Speaker after a general election, this is understood to be a symbolic act, and party discipline is always followed in any ballot. By reason of section 40 of the Constitution, while in the Chair, a Speaker does not have a vote, but if there is a tie in votes. Most Speakers have been senior backbenchers of the party holding office at the start of a new Parliament, two were former state premiers, Holder and Watt. Bronwyn Bishop was elected Speaker on 12 November 2013, as the Coalitions first female Speaker of the House, the Parliament was the first Australian federal parliament to have had three Speakers, Harry Jenkins, Peter Slipper, and Anna Burke. The name Speaker originates from olden times in the United Kingdom House of Commons, mr Speaker was a description rather than a title, the speaker being the Member of Parliament chosen to speak for them to the king. The first recorded use of the term Speaker was in 1377, during earlier times when the king was very powerful, he would usually only call the Parliament together to get it to agree to levy taxes. The speaker would report parliaments decisions to the king, which proved to be if it was not what the king wanted to hear

28.
Parliament of Australia
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It consists of three elements, the Queen of Australia, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Queen is represented by the Governor-General, through both Houses, however, there is a fused executive, drawn from the Westminster System. The upper house, the Senate, consists of 76 members, twelve for each state, Senators are elected using the single transferable vote proportional representation system and as a result, the chamber features a multitude of parties vying for power. The governing party or coalition rarely has a majority in the Senate and usually needs to negotiate with other parties and this tends to lead to the chamber being dominated by two major parties, the Liberal/National Coalition and the Labor Party. The government of the day must achieve the confidence of this House in order to gain and remain in power, although elections can be called early, each 3 years the full House of Representatives and half of the Senate is dissolved and goes up for reelection. The two Houses meet in separate chambers of Parliament House on Capital Hill in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, the Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901 with the federation of the six Australian colonies. The inaugural election took place on 29 and 30 March and the first Australian Parliament was opened on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V. The only building in Melbourne that was enough to accommodate the 14,000 guests was the western annexe of the Royal Exhibition Building. After the official opening, from 1901 to 1927, the Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne and it had always been intended that the national Parliament would sit in a new national capital. This was a compromise at Federation due to the rivalry between the two largest Australian cities, Sydney and Melbourne, which wished to become the new capital. The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the capital city in 1908. A competition was announced on 30 June 1914 to design Parliament House, however, due to the start of World War I the next month, the competition was cancelled. It was re-announced in August 1916, but again postponed indefinitely on 24 November 1916, in the meantime, John Smith Murdoch, the Commonwealths Chief Architect, worked on the design as part of his official duties. He had little enthusiasm for the project, as he felt it was a waste of money. Nevertheless, he designed the building by default, the construction of Old Parliament House, as it is called today, was commenced on 28 August 1923 and completed in early 1927. It was built by the Commonwealth Department of Works, using tradesmen, the final cost was about £600,000, which was more than three times the original estimate. It was designed to house the parliament for a maximum of 50 years until a permanent facility could be built, the building was opened on 9 May 1927 by the Duke and Duchess of York. The opening ceremonies were both splendid and incongruous, given the sparsely built nature of Canberra of the time and its small population, the building was extensively decorated with British Empire and Australian flags and bunting

29.
Upper house
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An upper house, sometimes called a Senate, is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house. The house formally designated as the house is usually smaller. Examples of upper houses in countries include the UKs House of Lords, Canadas Senate, Indias Rajya Sabha, Russias Federation Council, Irelands Seanad, Germanys Bundesrat, a legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral. An upper house is different from the lower house in at least one of the following respects, Powers, In a parliamentary system. Therefore, in countries the Upper House votes on only limited legislative matters. Cannot vote a motion of no confidence against the government, while the house always can. In a presidential system, It may have equal or nearly equal power with the lower house and it may have specific powers not granted to the lower house. For example, It may give advice and consent to some executive decisions and it may have the sole power to try impeachments against officials of the executive, following enabling resolutions passed by the lower house. Status, In some countries, its members are not popularly elected, membership may be indirect and its members may be elected with a different voting system than that used to elect the lower house. Less populated states, provinces, or administrative divisions may be represented in the upper house than in the lower house. Members terms may be longer than in the house. Members may be elected in portions, for staggered terms, rather than all at one time, in some countries, the upper house cannot be dissolved at all, or can be dissolved only in more limited circumstances than the lower house. It typically has fewer members or seats than the lower house and it has usually a higher age of candidacy than the lower house. In parliamentary systems the upper house is seen as an advisory or revising chamber. Some or all of the restrictions are often placed on upper houses. No absolute veto of proposed legislation, though suspensive vetoes are permitted in some states, in countries where it can veto legislation, it may not be able to amend the proposals. A reduced or even absent role in initiating legislation, additionally, a Government must have the consent of both to remain in office, a position which is known as perfect bicameralism or equal bicameralism. An example is the British House of Lords, bills can only be delayed for up to one year before the Commons can use the Parliament Act, although economic bills can only be delayed for one month

30.
Australian Senate
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The Australian Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter I, there are a total of 76 senators,12 senators are elected from each of the six states and two from each of the two autonomous internal territories. Senators are popularly elected under the single vote system of proportional representation. As a result of proportional representation, the features a multitude of parties vying for power. Senators normally serve fixed terms, unless the Senate is dissolved earlier in a double dissolution. Following a double half the state senators serve terms ending on the third 30 June following the election with the rest serving three years longer. The term of the territory senators expires at the time as there is an election for the House of Representatives. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900 established the Senate as part of the new system of government in newly federated Australia. From a comparative perspective, the Australian Senate exhibits distinctive characteristics. Unlike upper Houses in other Westminster system governments, the Senate is not a body with limited legislative power. Rather it was intended to play – and does play – an active role in legislation, the Constitution intended to give less populous states added voice in a Federal legislature, while also providing for the revising role of an upper house in the Westminster system. In practice, however, most legislation in the Australian Parliament is initiated by the Government and it is then passed to the Senate, which has the opportunity to amend the bill or refuse to pass it. In the majority of cases, voting takes place along party lines, since 2015, armed officers of the Australian Federal Police have been placed on duty to protect both chambers of the Federal Parliament. The system for electing senators has changed several times since Federation, the original arrangement involved a first-past-the-post block voting or winner takes all system, on a state-by-state basis. This was replaced in 1919 by preferential block voting, block voting tended to produce landslide majorities and even wipe-outs. For instance, from 1920 to 1923 the Nationalist Party of Australia had 35 of the 36 senators, and from 1947 to 1950, the Australian Labor Party had 33 of the 36 senators. From the 1984 election, group ticket voting was introduced in order to reduce a high rate of voting that arose from the requirement that each candidate be given a preference. As a result of the changes, voters may assign their preferences for parties above the line, or individual candidates below the line, both above and below the line voting now use optional preferential voting

31.
Lower house
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A lower house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position below the house, in many legislatures worldwide. A legislature composed of one house is described as unicameral. In comparison with the house, lower houses frequently display certain characteristics, Powers In a parliamentary system, Much more power. Able to override the upper house in some ways, can vote a motion of no confidence against the government. In a presidential system, Somewhat less power, as the house alone gives advice. Given the sole power to impeach the executive Status Always elected directly, while the house may be elected directly, indirectly. Its members may be elected with a different voting system to the upper house, most populated administrative divisions are better represented than in the upper house, representation is usually proportional to population. Elected all at once, not by staggered terms, in a parliamentary system, can be dissolved by the executive. Has total or original control over budget and monetary laws, lower age of candidacy than the upper house. Many lower houses are named in the manner, House/Chamber of Representatives/the People/Commons/Deputies

32.
Australian House of Representatives
–
The Australian House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the Parliament of Australia. It is referred to as the house, with the Senate being referred to as the upper house. The House is almost always dissolved earlier, usually alone but sometimes in a double dissolution of both Houses, a member of the House may be referred to as a Member of Parliament, while a member of the Senate is usually referred to as a Senator. The government of the day and by extension the Prime Minister must achieve, the House of Representatives currently consists of 150 members, elected by and representing single member districts, known as electoral divisions. The number of members is not fixed, but can vary with boundary changes resulting from electoral redistributions, the most recent overall increase in the size of the House, which came into effect at the 1984 election, increased the number of members from 125 to 148. It reduced to 147 at the 1993 election, returned to 148 at the 1996 election, each division elects one member using full-preference Instant-runoff voting. This was put in place after the 1918 Swan by-election, which Labor unexpectedly won with the largest primary vote, the Nationalist government of the time changed the lower house voting system from first-past-the-post to full-preference preferential voting, effective from the 1919 general election. This system has remained in place since, allowing the Coalition parties to safely contest the same seats, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900 established the House of Representatives as part of the new system of dominion government in newly federated Australia. The House is presided over by the Speaker, Members of the House are elected from single member electorates. One vote one value legislation requires all electorates to have approximately the number of voters with a maximum 10% variation. However, the quota for the number of voters in an electorate is determined by the number of voters in the state in which that electorate is found. Meanwhile, all the states except Tasmania have electorates approximately within the same 10% tolerance, voting is by the preferential system, also known as instant-runoff voting. A full allocation of preferences is required for a vote to be considered formal and this allows for a calculation of the two-party-preferred vote. Under Section 24 of the Constitution, each state is entitled to members based on a quota determined from the latest statistics of the Commonwealth. These statistics arise from the census conducted under the auspices of section 51, the parliamentary entitlement of a state or territory is established by the Electoral Commissioner dividing the number of the people of the Commonwealth by twice the number of Senators. This is known as the Nexus Provision, the reasons for this are twofold, to maintain a constant influence for the smaller states and to maintain a constant balance of the two Houses in case of a joint sitting after a double dissolution. The population of state and territory is then divided by this quota to determine the number of members to which each state. Under the Australian Constitution all original states are guaranteed at least five members, the Federal Parliament itself has decided that the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory should have at least one member each

33.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established as a sovereign state on 1 January 1801 by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The growing desire for an Irish Republic led to the Irish War of Independence, Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, and the state was consequently renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain financed the European coalition that defeated France in 1815 in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire thereby became the foremost world power for the next century. The Crimean War with Russia and the Boer wars were relatively small operations in a largely peaceful century, rapid industrialisation that began in the decades prior to the states formation continued up until the mid-19th century. A devastating famine, exacerbated by government inaction in the century, led to demographic collapse in much of Ireland. It was an era of economic modernization and growth of industry, trade and finance. Outward migration was heavy to the colonies and to the United States. Britain also built up a large British Empire in Africa and Asia, India, by far the most important possession, saw a short-lived revolt in 1857. In foreign policy Britain favoured free trade, which enabled its financiers and merchants to operate successfully in many otherwise independent countries, as in South America. Britain formed no permanent military alliances until the early 20th century, when it began to cooperate with Japan, France and Russia, and moved closer to the United States. A brief period of limited independence for Ireland came to an end following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British governments fear of an independent Ireland siding against them with the French resulted in the decision to unite the two countries. This was brought about by legislation in the parliaments of both kingdoms and came into effect on 1 January 1801, however, King George III was bitterly opposed to any such Emancipation and succeeded in defeating his governments attempts to introduce it. When the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain agreed to return most of the territories it had seized, in May 1803, war was declared again. In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System and this policy aimed to eliminate the threat from the British by closing French-controlled territory to foreign trade. Frances population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the British Isles, Napoleon expected that cutting Britain off from the European mainland would end its economic hegemony. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent, after Napoleons surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned. The Allies united and the armies of Wellington and Blucher defeated Napoleon once, simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes, arming hostile Indians and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. The war was little noticed in Britain, which could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814, American frigates inflicted a series of defeats on the Royal Navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe

34.
Federation of Australia
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Fiji and New Zealand were originally part of this process, but they decided not to join the federation. When the Constitution of Australia came into force, on 1 January 1901, the efforts to bring about federation in the mid-19th century were dogged by the lack of popular support for the movement. A number of conventions were held during the 1890s to develop a constitution for the Commonwealth, Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, was instrumental in this process. The election returned Barton as prime minister, though without a majority and this period has lent its name to an architectural style prevalent in Australia at that time, known as Federation architecture, or Federation style. A serious movement for Federation of the colonies arose in the late 1880s, a time there was increasing nationalism amongst Australians. The idea of being Australian began to be celebrated in songs and this was fostered by improvements in transport and communications, such as the establishment of a telegraph system between the colonies in 1872. The Australian colonies were influenced by other federations which had emerged around the world, notably in Argentina, Canada, Switzerland. Sir Henry Parkes, then Colonial Secretary of New South Wales, the Federation had the potential to ensure that throughout the continent, trade, and interstate commerce would be unaffected by protectionism and measurement and transport would be standardised. The final push for the Federal Council came at a conference in 1883, called to debate the strategies needed to counter the activities of the German and French in New Guinea, Sir Samuel Griffith, the Premier of Queensland, drafted a bill to constitute the Federal Council. The conference successfully petitioned the Imperial Parliament to enact the bill as the Federal Council of Australasia Act 1885, as a result, a Federal Council of Australasia was formed, to represent the affairs of the colonies in their relations with the South Pacific islands. New South Wales and New Zealand did not join, the self-governing colonies of Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria, as well as the Crown Colonies of Western Australia and Fiji, became involved. South Australia was briefly a member between 1888 and 1890, furthermore, the absence of the powerful colony of New South Wales weakened its representative value. Nevertheless, it was the first major form of inter-colonial co-operation and it provided an opportunity for Federalists from around the country to meet and exchange ideas. The means by which the Council was established endorsed the continuing role that the Imperial Parliament would have in the development of Australias constitutional structure, the individual colonies, Victoria excepted, were somewhat wary of Federation. Queensland, for its part, worried that the advent of national legislation would restrict the importing of kanaka labourers and these were not the only concerns of those resistant to federation. Smaller colonies also worried about the abolition of tariffs, which would deprive them of a proportion of their revenue. New South Wales, traditionally free-trade in its outlook, wanted to be satisfied that the federations tariff policy would not be protectionist, Victorian Premier James Service described fiscal union as the lion in the way of federation. A further fundamental issue was how to distribute the excess customs duties from the government to the states

35.
Constitution of Australia
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The Constitution of Australia is the supreme law under which the government of the Commonwealth of Australia operates, including its relationship to the States of Australia. The most important is the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 became law on 9 July 1900, and entered into force on 1 January 1901. Other pieces of legislation have constitutional significance for Australia, even though the same person, Queen Elizabeth II, is the monarch of both countries, she acts in a distinct capacity as monarch of each. Under Australias common law system, the High Court of Australia and their decisions determine the interpretation and application of the constitution. However, the Constitution has continued to develop since then, with two laws having particularly significant impact on the status of the nation. However, impetus came from Britain and there was only lacklustre local support. These difficulties led to the failure of attempts to bring about federation in the 1850s and 1860s. The Federal Council could legislate on certain subjects, but did not have a permanent secretariat, the absence of New South Wales, the largest colony, also diminished its representative value. By the 1891 conference, significant momentum had been built for the federalist cause, under the guidance of Sir Samuel Griffith, a draft constitution was drawn up. However, these meetings lacked popular support, furthermore, the draft constitution sidestepped certain important issues, such as tariff policy. The draft of 1891 was submitted to colonial parliaments but lapsed in New South Wales, in 1895, the six premiers of the Australian colonies agreed to establish a new Convention by popular vote. The Convention met over the course of a year from 1897 to 1898, the meetings produced a new draft which contained substantially the same principles of government as the 1891 draft, but with added provisions for responsible government. To ensure popular support, the draft was presented to the electors of each colony, after one failed attempt, an amended draft was submitted to the electors of each colony except Western Australia. After ratification by the five colonies, the Bill was presented to the British Imperial Parliament with an Address requesting Queen Victoria to enact the Bill, finally, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1900. Western Australia finally agreed to join the Commonwealth in time for it to be an member of the Commonwealth of Australia. In 1988, the copy of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 from the Public Record Office in London was lent to Australia for the purposes of the Australian Bicentenary. As a result, since Australia was still legally a colony and this was resolved by the Statute of Westminster 1931, adopted by the Commonwealth via the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942. The Statute of Westminster freed the Dominions, including the Commonwealth, legally, this is often regarded as the moment of Australias national independence

36.
Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942
–
The Statute of Westminster allowed the Dominion parliaments and governments to act independently of the British Parliament and Government. The Act is more important for its symbolic value than for the effect of its provisions. While Australias growing independence from the United Kingdom was well accepted and it also symbolised the shift in Australias foreign policy from a focus on the United Kingdom to the United States. Australias progression to independence was gradual and largely without incident. New South Wales was founded as a British colony in Sydney in 1788, other colonies split away from New South Wales or were separately established over the Australian continent in the ensuing decades. This accorded Australia somewhat greater independence and this was an important international demonstration of the independence of the Dominions. The Statute of Westminster 1931 gave legal effect to the Balfour Declaration, most importantly, it declared that the Parliament of the United Kingdom no longer had any legislative authority over the Dominions. Previously, the Dominions were legally colonies of the United Kingdom, the Statute made the Dominions de jure independent nations. The Statute took effect immediately over Canada, South Africa and the Irish Free State, however, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland had to ratify the Statute through legislation before it would apply to them. Canada also requested certain exemptions from the Statute in regard to the Canadian Constitution, Australian politicians initially resisted ratification of the Statute. Latham had attended both the 1926 Imperial Conference and the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and he had experience in international affairs. He preferred that the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Dominions not be codified in legislation, however, other politicians supported the Statute, and the new independence it gave to Australia. In 1930, shortly before the Statute was enacted, the Labor Prime Minister James Scullin recommended Sir Isaac Isaacs as the Governor-General of Australia, although King George V disapproved of Isaacs, the 1930 Imperial Conference upheld the procedure under the declaration, and so the King appointed Isaacs. The other Dominions supported this demonstration of political independence, four successive Prime Ministers – James Scullin, Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies and Arthur Fadden – did not adopt the Statute. Before the 1940s, the United Kingdom had managed Australias foreign relations as a matter of course, curtins decision to formally adopt the Statute of Westminster in late 1942 was a demonstration to the international community that Australia was an independent nation. Since 7 November 1939, the Royal Australian Navy had operated subject to British imperial law, adopting the Statute of Westminster, so that Australia became able to amend applicable imperial law, avoided a potential repetition of this situation. The mens sentences were later further reduced, for a simple Act, it had a significant effect. Section 4 of the Statute provided that made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom would only have effect on a Dominion at the request of the government of that Dominion

37.
Australia Act 1986
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While each Act gives its short title as Australia Act 1986, in Australia they are referred to, respectively, as the Australia Act 1986 and the Australia Act 1986. These nearly identical Acts were passed by the two parliaments, to come into effect simultaneously, because of uncertainty as to which of the two parliaments had the authority to do so. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 by federation of six British colonies, the Commonwealth Constitution provided for a Commonwealth Parliament, with legislative power on a range of specified topics, leaving the residue of legislative power to the States. That constitution was contained in a British statute, the United Kingdom Parliament retained ultimate legislative power in relation to Australia. The UK Parliaments power to legislate with effect for the Commonwealth itself was mostly ended with the Statute of Westminster 1931, when adopted by Australia in 1942 retroactive to 1939. The Statute provided that no future UK Act would apply to a Dominion as part of its law unless the Act expressly declared that the Dominion had requested and consented to it. Until then, Australia had legally been a colony of the United Kingdom. However, s 4 of the Statute only affected UK laws that were to apply as part of Australian Commonwealth law, thus, the Parliament of the United Kingdom still had the power to legislate for the states and territories. In practice, however, this power was almost never exercised, for example, in a referendum on secession in Western Australia in April 1933, 68% of voters favoured seceding from Australia and becoming a separate Dominion. As a result of decision in London, no action was taken in Canberra or Perth. The Australia Act ended all power of the UK Parliament to legislate with effect in Australia – that is, as part of the law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory. State laws would no longer be subject to disallowance or suspension by the Queen – a power that, anomalously, similarly, the Australia Act removed the power of the British government to be involved in the governing of an Australian State. Specifically, only the State Premier could now advise the Queen on appointment or removal of a State Governor, nonetheless, the Queen could still exercise any of her powers with respect to the State if she was personally present in the State. At federation in 1901, the court of each colony became the supreme court of that State. In 1903, a High Court of Australia was established, one of whose functions was to hear appeals from the State supreme courts, however, the British insisted on a compromise. Section 74 of the Constitution as enacted by the Imperial Parliament, and there could be an appeal with permission of the Privy Council. The Commonwealth Parliament was empowered to legislate to limit the path and it did so in 1968 and 1975. Predictably, the High Court proved reluctant to grant certificates for appeal to the Privy Council, the discretion was exercised only once, in 1912

38.
Geography of Australia
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The geography of Australia encompasses a wide variety of biogeographic regions being the worlds smallest continent but the sixth-largest country in the world. The population of Australia is concentrated along the eastern and southeastern coasts, the geography of the country is extremely diverse, ranging from the snow-capped mountains of the Australian Alps and Tasmania to large deserts, tropical and temperate forests. Australia is a country, and a continent and it is located in Oceania between the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean. The Australian mainland has a coastline length of 35,877 km with an additional 23,859 km of island coastlines. There are 758 estuaries around the country with most located in the tropical and sub-tropical zones, Australia claims an extensive Exclusive Economic Zone of 8,148,250 square kilometres. This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory, Australia has the largest area of ocean jurisdiction of any country on earth. The northernmost points of the country are the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, the western half of Australia consists of the Western Plateau, which rises to mountain heights near the west coast and falls to lower elevations near the continental centre. The Western Plateau region is flat, though broken by various mountain ranges such as the Hamersley Range, the MacDonnell Ranges. Surface water is lacking in the Western Plateau, although there are several larger rivers in the west and north, such as the Murchison, Ashburton. The Eastern Highlands, or Great Dividing Range, lie near the eastern coast of Australia and these Eastern Australian temperate forests have the greatest relief, the most rainfall, the most abundant and varied flora and fauna, and the densest human settlement. Off the eastern coast of Australia is the worlds largest coral reef complex, the State of Tasmania, a large and mountainous island, resides in the south-eastern corner of Australia. Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest continental landmass on Earth, geological forces such as tectonic uplift of mountain ranges or clashes between tectonic plates occurred mainly in Australias early history, when it was still a part of Gondwana. Its highest peak is Mount Kosciuszko at 2,228 metres, erosion has heavily weathered Australias surface. Australia is situated in the middle of the plate. Minor earthquakes which produce no damage occur regularly, while major earthquakes measuring greater than magnitude 6 occur on average five years. The terrain is mostly low plateau with deserts, rangelands and a plain in the southeast. Tasmania and the Australian Alps do not contain any permanent icefields or glaciers, the Great Barrier Reef, by far the worlds largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast. The Australian continental landmass consists of 6 distinct landform divisions, the headwaters of some waterways are located in tropical regions where summer rains create a high rate of discharge

39.
Demography of Australia
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The demography of Australia covers basic statistics, most populous cities, ethnicity and religion. The population of Australia is estimated to be 24,414,800 as of 7 April 2017, Australia is the 52nd most populous country in the world and the most populous Oceanian country. Its population is concentrated mainly in areas and is expected to exceed 28 million by 2030. Australias population has grown from a population of between 300,000 and 1,000,000 at the time of British settlement in 1788 due to numerous waves of immigration during the period since. Also due to immigration, the European component of the population is declining as a percentage, Australia has an average population density of 3.2 persons per square kilometre of total land area. With 89. 01% of its living in urban areas. The life expectancy of Australia in 1999–2001 was 79.7 years, the earliest accepted timeline for the first arrivals of indigenous Australians to the continent of Australia places this human migration to at least 40,000 years ago. These first inhabitants of Australia were originally hunter-gatherers, who over the course of succeeding generations diversified widely throughout the continent. Although their technical culture remained static—depending on wood, bone, and stone tools, most spoke several languages, and confederacies sometimes linked widely scattered tribal groups. Aboriginal population density ranged from one person per 3 km2 along the coasts to one person per 90 km2 in the arid interior. Food procurement was usually a matter for the family, requiring an estimated 3 days of work per week. There was little game, and outside of some communities in the more fertile south-east. Dutch navigators landed on the coasts of modern Western Australia and Queensland several times during the 17th century, captain James Cook claimed the east coast for Great Britain in 1770, the west coast was later settled by Britain also. At that time, the population was estimated to have been between 315,000 and 750,000, divided into many tribes speaking many different languages. Since the end of World War II, efforts have made both by the government and by the public to be more responsive to Aboriginal rights and needs. The Northern Territory has an Indigenous population of almost 70,000, Australia contains five cities that consist of over one million people. Most of Australias population live close to coastlines, the population density in Australia was last reported as 2. 91/km2. The density was 2. 8/km2 in 2008 and 2. 86/km2 in 2009 and that made Australia the 3rd least densely populated country in the world, after Namibia and Mongolia

40.
Gross domestic product
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Gross Domestic Product is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period. Nominal GDP estimates are used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region. The OECD defines GDP as a measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident and institutional units engaged in production. ”An IMF publication states that GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of industry or sector of the economy. The ratio of GDP to the population of the region is the per capita GDP. William Petty came up with a concept of GDP to defend landlords against unfair taxation during warfare between the Dutch and the English between 1652 and 1674. Charles Davenant developed the method further in 1695, the modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934. In this report, Kuznets warned against its use as a measure of welfare, after the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a countrys economy. The switch from GNP to GDP in the US was in 1991, the history of the concept of GDP should be distinguished from the history of changes in ways of estimating it. The value added by firms is relatively easy to calculate from their accounts, but the value added by the sector, by financial industries. GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should, in principle, give the same result and they are the production approach, the income approach, or the expenditure approach. The most direct of the three is the approach, which sums the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the factors must be equal to the value of their product. This approach mirrors the OECD definition given above, deduct intermediate consumption from gross value to obtain the gross value added. Gross value added = gross value of output – value of intermediate consumption, value of output = value of the total sales of goods and services plus value of changes in the inventories. The sum of the value added in the various economic activities is known as GDP at factor cost. GDP at factor cost plus indirect taxes less subsidies on products = GDP at producer price, for measuring output of domestic product, economic activities are classified into various sectors. Subtracting each sectors intermediate consumption from gross output gives the GDP at factor cost, adding indirect tax minus subsidies in GDP at factor cost gives the GDP at producer prices

41.
Purchasing power parity
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Observed deviations of the exchange rate from purchasing power parity are measured by deviations of the real exchange rate from its PPP value of 1. PPP exchange rates help to minimize misleading international comparisons that can arise with the use of exchange rates. For example, suppose that two countries produce the same amounts of goods as each other in each of two different years. But if one countrys GDP is converted into the countrys currency using PPP exchange rates instead of observed market exchange rates. The idea originated with the School of Salamanca in the 16th century, the best-known purchasing power adjustment is the Geary–Khamis dollar. The real exchange rate is equal to the nominal exchange rate. If purchasing power parity held exactly, then the exchange rate would always equal one. However, in practice the exchange rates exhibit both short run and long run deviations from this value, for example due to reasons illuminated in the Balassa–Samuelson theorem. There can be marked differences between purchasing power adjusted incomes and those converted via market exchange rates. This discrepancy has large implications, for instance, when converted via the exchange rates GDP per capita in India is about US$1,965 while on a PPP basis it is about US$7,197. At the other extreme, Denmarks nominal GDP per capita is around US$62,100, the purchasing power parity exchange rate serves two main functions. PPP exchange rates can be useful for making comparisons between countries because they stay fairly constant from day to day or week to week and only change modestly, if at all, from year to year. The PPP exchange-rate calculation is controversial because of the difficulties of finding comparable baskets of goods to compare purchasing power across countries, people in different countries typically consume different baskets of goods. It is necessary to compare the cost of baskets of goods and this is a difficult task because purchasing patterns and even the goods available to purchase differ across countries. Thus, it is necessary to make adjustments for differences in the quality of goods, furthermore, the basket of goods representative of one economy will vary from that of another, Americans eat more bread, Chinese more rice. Hence a PPP calculated using the US consumption as a base will differ from that calculated using China as a base, additional statistical difficulties arise with multilateral comparisons when more than two countries are to be compared. Various ways of averaging bilateral PPPs can provide a stable multilateral comparison. These are all issues of indexing, as with other price indices there is no way to reduce complexity to a single number that is equally satisfying for all purposes

42.
United States dollar
–
The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common

43.
Gini coefficient
–
The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nations residents, and is the most commonly used measure of inequality. It was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini, the Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same, a Gini coefficient of 1 expresses maximal inequality among values. However, a greater than one may occur if some persons represent negative contribution to the total. For larger groups, values close to or above 1 are very unlikely in practice, the exception to this is in the redistribution of wealth resulting in a minimum income for all people. When the population is sorted, if their distribution were to approximate a well known function. The Gini coefficient was proposed by Gini as a measure of inequality of income or wealth, the global income Gini coefficient in 2005 has been estimated to be between 0.61 and 0.68 by various sources. There are some issues in interpreting a Gini coefficient, the same value may result from many different distribution curves. The demographic structure should be taken into account, Countries with an aging population, or with a baby boom, experience an increasing pre-tax Gini coefficient even if real income distribution for working adults remains constant. Scholars have devised over a dozen variants of the Gini coefficient, the line at 45 degrees thus represents perfect equality of incomes. The Gini coefficient can then be thought of as the ratio of the area lies between the line of equality and the Lorenz curve over the total area under the line of equality. It is also equal to 2A and to 1 - 2B due to the fact that A + B =0.5. If all people have non-negative income, the Gini coefficient can theoretically range from 0 to 1, in practice, both extreme values are not quite reached. If negative values are possible, then the Gini coefficient could theoretically be more than 1, normally the mean is assumed positive, which rules out a Gini coefficient less than zero. An alternative approach would be to consider the Gini coefficient as half of the mean absolute difference. The effects of income policy due to redistribution can be seen in the linear relationships. An informative simplified case just distinguishes two levels of income, low and high, if the high income group is u % of the population and earns a fraction f % of all income, then the Gini coefficient is f − u. An actual more graded distribution with these same values u and f will always have a higher Gini coefficient than f − u, the proverbial case where the richest 20% have 80% of all income would lead to an income Gini coefficient of at least 60%

44.
Human Development Index
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The Human Development Index is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the level is higher. The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, while the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that the IHDI is the actual level of human development, and the HDI can be viewed as an index of potential human development. The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Human Development Reports produced by the Human Development Reports Office of the United Nations Development Programme, nobel laureate Amartya Sen, utilized Haqs work in his own work on human capabilities. The following three indices are used,1, Life Expectancy Index = LE −2085 −20 LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20. Education Index = MYSI + EYSI22.1 Mean Years of Schooling Index = MYS15 Fifteen is the maximum of this indicator for 2025. 2.2 Expected Years of Schooling Index = EYS18 Eighteen is equivalent to achieving a degree in most countries. Income Index = ln ⁡ − ln ⁡ ln ⁡ − ln ⁡ II is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100. Finally, the HDI is the mean of the previous three normalized indices, HDI = LEI ⋅ EI ⋅ II3. Standard of living, as indicated by the logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. This methodology was used by the UNDP until their 2011 report, the formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. The 2016 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on March 21,2017, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2015 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. The rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data. Countries in the top quartile of HDI with a missing IHDI, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Brunei, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Andorra, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The 2015 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on December 14,2015, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2014 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. Note, The green arrows, red arrows, and blue dashes represent changes in rank, the rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data

45.
Australian dollar
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Within Australia, it is almost always abbreviated with the dollar sign, with A$ or AU$ sometimes used to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. It is subdivided into 100 cents, in 2011, the Australian dollar was the fifth most traded currency in the world, accounting for 7. 6% of the worlds daily share. It trades in the foreign exchange markets behind the US dollar, the euro, the yen. The currency is referred to by foreign-exchange traders as the Aussie dollar. With pounds, shillings and pence to be replaced by decimal currency on 14 February 1966, in 1963, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, a monarchist, wished to name the currency the royal. Other proposed names included more exotic suggestions such as the austral, the oz, the boomer, the roo, the kanga, the emu, the digger, the quid, the dinkum and the ming. Menzies influence resulted in the selection of the royal, and trial designs were prepared and printed by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Treasurer, Harold Holt, announced the decision in Parliament on 5 June 1963. The royal would be subdivided into 100 cents, but the existing names shilling, florin, the name royal for the currency proved very unpopular, with Holt and his wife even receiving death threats. On 24 July Holt told the Cabinet the decision had been a terrible mistake, on 18 September Holt advised Parliament that the name was to be the dollar, of 100 cents. The Australian pound, introduced in 1910 and officially distinct in value from the pound sterling since devaluation in 1931, was replaced by the dollar on 14 February 1966. The rate of conversion for the new currency was two dollars per Australian pound, or ten Australian shillings per dollar. The exchange rate was pegged to the pound sterling at a rate of $1 =8 shillings, in 1967, Australia effectively left the sterling area, when the pound sterling was devalued against the US dollar and the Australian dollar did not follow. It maintained its peg to the US dollar at the rate of A$1 = US$1.12, on 27 September 2012, the Reserve Bank of Australia stated that they had ordered work on a project to upgrade the current banknotes. The upgraded banknotes will incorporate a number of new features so that they remain secure into the future, the first new banknotes were issued from the 1st of September 2016, with the remaining denominations to be issued in the coming years. In 1966, coins were introduced in denominations of 1,2,5,10,20 and 50 cents. The initial 50-cent coins contained high silver content and were withdrawn after a year after the value of the silver content was found to exceed the face value of the coins. One-dollar coins were introduced in 1984, followed by two-dollar coins in 1988, the one- and two-cent coins were discontinued in 1991 and withdrawn from circulation. In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of decimal currency, the 2006 mint proof and uncirculated sets included one-, in early 2013, Australias first triangular coin was introduced, to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of Parliament House

46.
ISO 4217
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The ISO4217 code list is used in banking and business globally. ISO4217 codes are used on tickets and international train tickets to remove any ambiguity about the price. The first two letters of the code are the two letters of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes and the third is usually the initial of the currency itself, so Japans currency code is JPY—JP for Japan and Y for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the dollar, franc, peso and pound being used in dozens of different countries. Also, if a currency is revalued, the currency codes last letter is changed to distinguish it from the old currency. Other changes can be seen, however, the Russian ruble, for example, changed from RUR to RUB and these currency units are denominated as one troy ounce of the specified metal as opposed to USD1 or EUR1. The code XTS is reserved for use in testing, the code XXX is used to denote a transaction involving no currency. There are also codes specifying certain monetary instruments used in international finance, the codes for most supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC and the CFA franc BCEAO. The predecessor to the euro, the European Currency Unit, had the code XEU, the use of an initial letter X for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned. Because of this rule ISO4217 can use X codes without risk of clashing with a country code. ISO3166 country codes beginning with X are used for private custom use, consequently, ISO4217 can use X codes for non-country-specific currencies without risk of clashing with future country codes. The inclusion of EU in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list, the ISO4217 standard includes a crude mechanism for expressing the relationship between a major currency unit and its corresponding minor currency unit. This mechanism is called the exponent and assumes a base of 10. For example, USD is equal to 100 of its currency unit the cent. So the USD has exponent 2, the code JPY is given the exponent 0, because its minor unit, the sen, although nominally valued at 1/100 of a yen, is of such negligible value that it is no longer used. Usually, as with the USD, the currency unit has a value that is 1/100 of the major unit, but in some cases 1/1000 is used. Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya equal to 5 khoums, some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all and these are given an exponent of 0, as with currencies whose minor units are unused due to negligible value. There is also a code number assigned to each currency

47.
Time in Australia
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Australia uses three main time zones, Australian Western Standard Time, Australian Central Standard Time, and Australian Eastern Standard Time. Time is regulated by the state governments, some of which observe daylight saving time. Australias external territories observe different time zones, Standard time was introduced in the 1890s when all of the Dominions adopted it. Before the switch to standard time zones, each city or town was free to determine its local time. Daylight saving time is used in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and it is not currently used in Western Australia, Queensland or the Northern Territory. The standardization of time in Australia began in 1892, when surveyors from the six Dominions in Australia met in Melbourne for the Intercolonial Conference of Surveyors, the delegates accepted the recommendation of the 1884 International Meridian Conference to adopt Greenwich Mean Time as the basis for standard time. The Dominions enacted time zone legislation, which took effect in February 1895. The clocks were set ahead of GMT by eight hours in Western Australia, by nine hours in South Australia, and by 10 hours in Queensland, New South Wales, the three time zones became known as Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time, and Western Standard Time. Broken Hill in the far west of New South Wales also adopted Central Standard Time due to it being connected by rail to Adelaide but not Sydney at the time. In May 1899, South Australia advanced Central Standard Time by thirty minutes, in doing so, South Australia also adopted a time meridian located outside its boundaries – another departure from international convention. Attempts to correct these oddities in 1986 and 1994 were rejected, when the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia and placed under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, that Territory kept Central Standard Time. Likewise, when the ACT was broken off from New South Wales, Australia has kept a version of the UTC atomic time scale since the 1990s, but Greenwich Mean Time remained the formal basis for the standard times of all of the states through 2005. All states have adopted the UTC standard, starting on 1 September 2005, such instruments may be valid for only the current year, and so this section generally only refers to the legislation. In New South Wales and Western Australia, the starting and ending dates, however, during World War I and World War II all states and territories used daylight saving time. In 1968 Tasmania became the first state in peacetime to use DST, followed in 1971 by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory did not adopt it. Queensland and Western Australia have occasionally used DST during the past 40 years during trial periods. The main DST zones are the following, Central Daylight Saving Time – UTC+10,30, in South Australia Eastern Daylight Saving Time – UTC+11, in New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, and Tasmania. During the usual periods of DST, the three time zones in Australia become five zones

Slaked lime holder, late 19th or early 20th century. The holder is decorated with wood carving of crocodile and bird. Details are emphasised with a white paint. The central portion, hollow to hold the slaked lime, is made of bamboo. The joints are covered with basketry work. The device is used in conjunction with chewing betel nut.